LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






[UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



Pulpit F 



ULPIT I UNGENCIES 



5 9 5 



Jl ULPIT 1 UNGJ 



UNGENCIES 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



*& 




New York : 
Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway. 



M DCCC LXVI 



BK7//7 
.84- ^5* 



Entered according to Act of Congress, m the year 1S66, by 

GEO. W. CARLETON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for 

the Southern District of New York. 



The Nf.w York Printing Company, 

81, 83, and 85 Centre Street, 

New York. 



CONTENTS 



No. of Pungency 

Preface 

i A.— " Well," says God, " Is he all right ? " 

2 A and B 

3 Knew what He was About 

4 About the lightest 

5 Sit on the edge of my Abundance 

6 Up hill every single step from Adam 

7 Admonished by God .... 

8 Ado about the sprinklings and drenchings 

9 Advice and hail-stones 
io Spiritual vs. stomachic Ailment 

1 1 Ain't as good as he is 

12 Air-holes 

13 Fed on Anxieties 

14 Is Anxious a baker ? 

15 As if he wasn't Anybody . 

16 Anybody can sing hymns 

17 Not a little Ape of a man . 

18 Stewart's and Appleton's 

19 We should Approve Him . 

20 The two Arms of God . 

21 Arms-length discourses 



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Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

22 Mobs God's providential Asses . . 36 

23 Auger and hammer men . . . 36 

24 Double fools, like the Austrian eagle . yj 

25 God Available 37 

26 Wherever a devil, a priest to Back him 37 

27 Professors of religion like Backgammon 

boards 38 

28 Shaken up in a Bag 38 

29 He is not half Baked ; he is dough ! . 39 

30 Ballooning to Heaven .... 40 

31 Balloons, gas and faith . 40 

32 Bandage their eyes with their mouths . 41 

33 Flour and John the Baptist . . . 41 

34 The old year a Basin .... 42 

35 A Basket with holes . . . . 43 

36 Like Basket-makers do their slips . . 43 
yj The Bastard offspring .... 44 

38 Ought to take trouble as he would a Bath 44 

39 Cold Bathing for the salacious devil . 45 

40 Bean-men 46 

41 His Beast, his own body .... 46 

42 Men like Beasts in menageries ... 47 

43 Going to Bed a Christian ... 47 

44 You hadn't Better jump .... 48 

45 The Bible a mere commentary . . 48 

46 Chestnuts and Bible truths ... 48 

47 Christ making out Bills of insurance . 49 
4S Religious Biographies pernicious and lying 49 
4.') Bipedal brutes ..... 50 

50 Black sounds ...... 50 

51 Never Blacked his boots on Sunday . 51 

52 in Blessed extravagance . . . .51 

6 



Contents 



No. of Pungency 


Page 


53 War a Blister plaster .... 


52 


54 Blown out before you are half burned 


52 


55 Bogus religion 


52 


56 Take their old Bones and stand in the way 


53 


57 Well Born when first born 


. 54 


58 Any amount of Botanical sincerity . 


54 


59 Up and down and out Both ways . 


55 


60 Top and Bottom 


55 


61 Lift up the Bottom charitably 


56 


62 Bow rigged with the passions . 


57 


63 The most Boy in him .... 


57 


64 Boys of all ages . . . 


57 


65 Bread and butter . . . 


58 


66 Breaking in 


58 


67 Breaks up into all manner of antics . 


58 


68 Only room to take Breath 


59 


69 Broad-leaved experience 


60 


70 Spirits Broken 


60 


71 Children are Bulbs 


61 


72 God coming down to Burrow 


61 


J3 Busy do-nothings 


62 


74 But and if, hell-gates 


62 


75 But then 


62 


76 I should Button up my pocket . 


63 


yy Big as a stage-driver's Button 


63 


78 Religion to be set Buzzing 


64 


79 A world of Buzzing .... 


64 


80 Careful Cannon-ball 


65 


81 Catholic Church — Used to bear good 




apples 


65 


82 Chaff farmers 


66 


83 The Chamber floor . . 


66 



Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

84 Charging up before the throne of God . 66 

S$ It is as Cheap to trust as to fret . . 67 

86 God doesn't promise to sign our Check . 67 

87 No harm in Checkers or backgammon 67 
SS A trowel better than a Chip ... 68 

89 God never said " Chisel" ... 68 

90 Getting out stone with a lead Chisel . 69 

91 Nearer Christ than you are a great deal ! . 70 

92 Chrysalis men 71 

93 You can tell what Church he belongs to 72 

94 The Church vs. God's kingdom . . 72 

95 A Church for hell 72 

96 Trusting a Church member ... 72 

97 A devil wouldn't be a Circumstance . 73 

98 Cleansed by her way of living . . 73 

99 God's providence never weaves Cloth . 74 

100 Parental anxiety Clucking all the day long 74 

10 1 What a Coarse book this Bible is . * 75 

102 No Coaxing grass to grow ... 75 

103 Cobwebbing the other — "My dear" . 76 

104 Infinite Cobwebs .... 77 

105 So He would — of Cockles ... 76 

106 The devil's Colporteurs ... 77 

107 Eat with Color and sleep with Color . 78 

108 That's Coming it 78 

109 Every man not a Commentator . . 79 
no Compromise — You must give up, for I 

can't ....... 79 

hi Would Compromise on $100,000 . . 80 

112 Coney Island water-logs . . . 80 

113 Too much Conscience .... 81 
j 14 Snow, Conservative rain .... 81 

8 



Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

115 Wares Contraband to heaven . . .81 

116 Copyists and dogs .... 82 

117 I always Cotton to the rich ... 82 

118 New York Courts .... 82 

119 One winter to Crack the shell ... 83 

120 Hot- water on a Cracked friendship . 83 

121 Crawl out of life ' . . . ... 84 

122 Crazy in his pocket .... 84 

123 With all Creation at his back ! . .85 

124 God's letter of Credit ... 85 

125 As though the thing were Cross-ploughed 85 



126 Taken later, it makes men Crusty . 

127 Reading prayers— walking with Crutches 

128 What should be the Cutwater ? 

1 29 Cypher both ways .... 

130 Cypherings for salvation . 

131 Every church wants somebody to Damn 

132 They never would say " Damn it ! " 

133 I will tell you all what you will get, and 

that is Damnation ! . 

134 Dandling troubles .... 

135 Don't be angry by the Day . 

136 Day of Judgment words . 

137 Dead a third of the time you are alive 

138 As I do the Devil .... 

139 Devil-duped and Devil-damned . 

140 Perpendicular ideas — Devil- talk 

141 If you want to retire, Die 

142 " I don't want to eat Dirt" . 

143 Dirty sin and burnished iniquity 

144 I have my Dividend of God's care 

145 When I Do religion, I Do religion . 

9 



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Contents 



Na of Pungency 

146 S 1,000 a day 

147 Down-hill duties 
14S The way to God is Down hill 

149 Dozing, dozing, dozing 

150 Swears with a strong Draft . 

151 Drawing deep . 

152 This a Drill world 

153 Drizzling indignation 

154 A Drug in the market . 

155 Leads^ down to Drunk 

156 Dry cards .... 

157 Dry — Split up into cord wood 

158 Dumb book and Dumb house 

159 Roll over on the Dung-hill of vice . 

160 Rankly as weeds on a Dung-hill 

161 Edifying . . . 

162 Mean as a religious Editor . 

163 Childhood is but an Egg . 

164 The Egg and the bird . 

165 Egg-sanctified .... 

166 God not Emasculate 

167 Men hate to be Emptied . 

168 End for End 

169 The other End and this End . 

170 Christ not only a royal Engineer 

171 How to Enjoy sickness . 

172 Christ's arms like an Equator 

173 That "Especially" was dead long ago 

174 Pitched out of the Establishment 

175 Expatriation 

176 An Exquisite lie . 

177 Fat to the very marrow . 

10 



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Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

178 Father and mother ride with them . 108 

179 Mr. Fat-soul the topmost man . .108 

180 The old, stupid Fellow . . . . 109 

181 Fellows afraid to say their soul is their 

own no 

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113 
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114 

"5 

115 
117 
117 
117 



182 Temporary Ferriage 

183 The lobby— Gratitude will Fetch him 

184 Infernal sprites to Fiddle for them 

185 Stealing Fire-wood .... 

186 Fishing, and revival preaching 

187 The Flap of whose tongue 

188 Their country's Fleece 

189 Well, who were all these Folks ? 

190 Solomon on a Fool's errand 

191 As a boy would roll a Foot-ball 

192 Phrenology and Foot-room . 

193 God won't see to the Fore part of the 

store 118 

194 Your Friends can 119 

195 Fringed him with abundant littleness . 119 

196 Smooth down the Fur . . . . 119 

197 Furiously devotional . . . .120 

198 Cuts his first Furrows of grace . . 121 

199 The devil's Furrows . . . .122 

200 I have seen a great deal of Gambling . 122 

201 God never shoots unless there is good 

Game 122 

202 Gate 123 

203 He Gave it to them, didn't he ? . .123 

204 Here and Georgia . . . . 124 

205 God could not Get along without it . . 125 

206 Not able to Get up a prayer . . 126 

II 



Contents 



No. of Pungency 

207 Heads high as a Gibbet . 

208 Gingerbread books 

209 You be Glad, too 

210 Til Go for justice . 

211 Not to give them the Go-by 

212 ''God damn you !" 

213 Wonder what God would do 

214 Neither he nor God knows . 

215 God-hood grows 

216 God-light is healthy 

217 Take hold of God's hand 

218 Long Gods and short Gods . 

219 The place where property Goes up 

220 Good nature not to be occasional 

221 Has Got to work for it . 

222 Parasites saying Grandiloquent things 

around the throne 

223 Such a Great fool .... 

224 Horace Greeley .... 

225 The world a Grindstone — God turns 

226 I Guess you'll know how to ac~t. . 

227 Wrapped in Gummed hideousness . 

228 Spoiled in the Gun-range 

229 Tie you to the Handle 

230 Don't let your anger Hang on 

23 1 Hangers-on play mosquito and steal blood 

for a living 

232 The Harnessed man .... 

233 Hatcheling the disposition 

234 Hatted and gloved .... 

235 You Have me there 

236 Health and the devil .... 

12 



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Contents 



No. of Pungency 

237 Healthy blood vs. Christianity 

238 Down at the Heel .... 

239 The curtain falls, and — Hell knows the 

rest 

240 I thank God there is a Hell ! 

241 A roistering, swearing Hellian 

242 Need not advertise in the Herald 

243 Lacks spring Here . . . . . 

244 Sing psalms in solo from Here to heaven 

245 One likes stimulants there, another Here 

246 If you are going to sin, be Heroic 

247 Hideous 

248 Carried his own head so High 

249 It has got to be High times 
.250 A Hit in the nick of time 

251 Why, they must Hitch ! . 

252 Laws like Hoes . 

253 Is thy servant a Hog ! 

254 Holy Ghost not merely No. 3 

255 God so busy, like a boy driving a 

256 Not yet Hopped out 

257 An insurrection in a Hospital . 

258 To every man his own Hull . 

259 Church Hyenas 

260 I — A sermon-fed child . 
I — Such doctrines not meant for daily use 
I — Not do it out of compliment to Christ 
I — 19 were women, and the other nothing 
I — The school-ma'am .... 

265 I — Orthodox and heterodox sleeping . 

266 The clock and I 

267 I try to pray that down 

13 



Hoop 



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Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

268 I — Bullet wouldn't go for me as it would 

for other people . . . . 159 

269 I never get drunk myself . . . .160 

270 I have got no collection to make . . 160 

271 I — Swearing among women . . .161 

272 Icebergs and churches .... 161 
■273 " HI watch him" . . . .162 

274 Infidelly 162 

275 Enough to have the devil Inoculate them 163 

276 Sunday the Insurance day . . .163 

277 Investments in the lower way of living 164 

278 The doctrine for Investments . . 165 

279 The Irish 165 

280 Has got It in him .... 166 

281 Jackal engravers 166 

2S2 Nothing but a Jack-knife . . ^ 168 

283 Jacob and not Esau 169 

284 In their own Jail 169 

285 Push aside the ordinary Janitor . .169 
2S6 The devil invented Journals . . 171 
287 Juicy in their intellect .... 171 
2S8 What a Jumbled up mess! . . . 171 

289 $200,000 — All the angels, and an impar- 

tial Jury 172 

290 Just what God did . . . . 173 

291 Kick back, and hurt him . . . .173 

292 Kicks you into the bosom of God's Pro- 

vidence . . . . . . 174 

293 Religion runs clear down to the Kitchen . 175 

294 If you Knock, you will not get in . 176 

295 You'll know it 176 

2</j Knowledgeable men . . • 177 



Contents 



302 
303 
304 
305 
306 

307 



No. of Pungency 

297 A man who Knows more than God does . 

298 The testament in Labor 

299 God has Laid in material 

300 Won't come together and Lap 

301 God's glory and human Laziness 
You are empty because you Leak all over 
Thou honest Legal thief! 
Legerdemain and logic 
Takes one, and Lets it fly . 
Limber-backed 
A Limited hint of grace 

308 Empty- bags — Men born Limpsy 

309 Loathsome lubricity- of pious talk 

310 Locked himself out . 

311 The devil Longer-headed than you 

312 It's his own Look-out 

313 I Love you 

314 High growing and Low-hoeing 

3 1 5 Lunge toward things outward 

316 He might as well be Maelzel's automaton 

317 A town Magazine of children . 

318 Practices a Manly reserve . 

319 Slip out of him like Marbles out of a 

tumbler ...... 

As to that Matter. I might . 

Measure their whole length 

Husband and wife — Statues of Memnon 

323 The Menagerie of your soul 

324 Mercies are Merchandise 
Nothing so Merchantable 
Better Mind their own business 
u O, never Mind" .... 

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Contents 



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351 
33- 
333 



No. of Pungency 

328 Miracles arc midwives 

Hit or Miss, and oftener Miss 

Wouldn't Miss much 

Missionary pirates .... 

Selling a Mocking-bird . 

A Moping Christian .... 

334 Mother Rice — That would shut him up 
23S Mousing, sneaking Pharisees 

336 Wait till the Mud is dry . 

337 Preaching — children making Mud huts 

335 Mummies 

339 Mummy 

340 The Bible and Murray's Guide-Book 

341 Men are harps, not Music-boxes 
3-12 God the best Music-teacher 

343 Covering Nakedness 

344 No devil — Namby-pamby talk 

345 Men and Needles 
Going through a Nettle-hedge 
Troubled with Neuralgia 
Perpetual Newnesses . 
A Nimrod minister . 
No great rise 

351 No special injury 

352 Men have such Notions now-a-days 

353 Novels contain better Gospel than many 

pulpits 

354 Hoeing in November .... 

jy-) A Nursing God 

2,3(3 Spelt with one O 

357 God will Offset 

358 Keep supplied with the Oil of grace . 

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Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

359 Made On purpose 216 

360 Opium and the Bible . . . . 216 

361 Other arrangements 217 

362 Overflowing the king's English . . 217 
362, Overlays 218 

364 "The world Owes us a living" . . 218 

365 When God wanted sponges and Oysters 219 

366 Carrying God's Packages and letters to 

eternity 219 

367 A new set of Papers .... 220 

368 The Parade-ground of revivals . . 220 

369 The Partnership law of Xew York . 220 

370 Passions to be sanctified, not crucified .221 

371 On a large Pasture-ground . . . 221 

372 Paul might have made a mistake in buy- 

ing that cloak 222 

373 Chirping " Peace" .... 222 

374 Prayer-meetings — Apples with the Peel 

on 223 

375 Perambulate in pantaloons . . . 223 

376 Prayers worn smooth — Perfunctory ser- 

vice 224 

377 A Perpendicular Yes or a Perpendicular 

Xo 225 

378 A Philosopher 225 

379 Conscience and Pianos . . . 226 

380 Fruits for God to Pick .... 226 

38 1 Not a little Piddling justice's court . 227 
3S2 Roll his Pile 227 

383 A Pismire on one of the pyramids . 227 

384 Takes you by the shoulders and Pitches 

you on the bed 228 

17 



Contents 



No. of Pungency 

385 The Plaster of an office 

386 Pleasure and damnation . 

387 Plump up to Peter 

388 Pocket-full and Pocket-empty . 

389 A villain or a Politician 

390 The disciples were such Poor fellows 

391 Pulling papers out of God's Portfolio 

392 The Portholes of the stomach . 

393 Natural laws and Post-offices 

394 Good to make the Pot boil 

395 Writing sermons instead of Preaching 

396 Premium on the road to hell 

397 A Prescriptive right to lie 

398 Pretty low 

399 Have to give me up again Pretty quick 

400 Prodigious logical springs . 

401 A good Property . . 

402 Prophecies like music to an army 

403 Proud as the devil .... 

404 Providence with clear heads 

405 Can put his Prow into life 

406 Pulverized children 

407 Only the Punctuation of their wealth 

408 A want of Push .... 

409 Whatever God Put through them . 

410 More than all the rest Put together 

411 Old Put ....'. . 

412 Rammed into us . 

413 Ran his head against authority 

414 God's providence vs. strong Regiments 

415 The Remainders of the Church . 

416 God's Remittances .... 

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Contents 



No. of Pungency Page 

417 Suppose it is your Rent . . . 244 

418 Rented furniture and opinions . . . 244 

419 Sin in Repenting 244 

420 A Reservoir-man 245 

421 Retired . . . . . . . 245 

422 Faintly Revealed at that .... 245 

423 Revolving graces 246 

424 Right between the joints of the harness . 246 

425 A Right up and down sort of a fellow . 246 

426 A Rip may destroy him - . . . . 247 

427 Hot-house for Ripening Souls . . 248 

428 Converting men just like Ripening grapes 248 

429 God Rocks it with his foot . . . 248 

430 Single-biaded men — Rodgers' knives . 249 

431 30 Rooms in a man's head . . . 249 

432 For a man to Roost on 250 

433 Rothschild and Moses .... 250 

434 Half-Rotten apples and Christians . 251 

435 A Royal family fight . . . .251 

436 A God to Rub up the stars . . . 252 

437 Got a Saint 252 

438 Prayer vs. Satan 252 

439 Satan impossible 253 

440 An old Scotch preacher . . . 253 

441 Men don't like to be Screwed up . . 253 

442 Business leaks at every Seam . . 254 

443 Selvage of goodness .... 254 

444 It gives a Set 254 

445 If manhood Sets too quick . . . 255 

446 The responsibility of a Shadow . . 255 

447 God Shakes the conceit out of them . 255 

448 Shaking hands a means of grace . . 256 

19 



Contents 



they 



No. of Pungency 

449 A contented live man is a Sham ! , 

450 Sharp-eyed and bat-eyed 

451 Shiftless Christians .... 

452 Christ putting Shingles on the roof 

453 Short off in the middle .' 

454 Fretted and stewed and Simmered , 

455 Sing Sing is asking "When will 

come ? " 

456 To Sit in our minds with the windows 

open 

457 There is a way through the Skin 

458 All Skin and polish 

459 Born Sleazy 

460 A Slippery Christian 

461 Remarkably Smart . 

462 Near enough to Smell heaven 

463 Only one Smouch . 

464 Everybody kicks Sober ones 

465 Their old Soddy lives 

466 Sold the world in the bargain 

467 Solomonculi 

468 Spigots vs. bunghole . 

469 We should grow up long and Spindling 

470 Sticks plentier than men — Splicing men 

471 Sprout 

472 God's Spy-glass .... 

473 A great thing to Squeak at every joint . 

474 We hear the victims Squeal 

475 Stand-up way of fighting 

476 It Stands to reason .... 

477 Staving oft* judgment now and then ! . 

478 God is Steering them ! 

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Contents 



No. of Pungency Page 

479 And then Stepped out .... 270 

480 Christians with a long Stem . . . 270 

481 Men with long polished Stems . . 271 

482 Let him Stew himself .... 272 

483 Churches Stick in the sheath . . 272 
4*84 Meanness Sticks 273 

485 The Devil a disordered Stomach . . 273 

486 No prayer-meeting like a man's own Store 273 

487 Not a good String 274 

488 Not do a Stroke 275 

489 Frogs, lice and all — Eugene Sue . . 275 

490 Girts and Surcingles for the heart . 275 

491 Sweet-juiced feelings .... 276 

492 Whipped Syllabub of creation . . 276 

493 The old Synagogue business over again . 277 

494 Tail-feather lies 278 

495 Blood will Tell 278 

496 Never took a Text out of the Bible . 279 

497 Thin, lathy men 279 

498 A good Thing 280 

499 A queer Thing 281 

500 A safe Thing 281 

501 The Thing 282 

502 The other Thing 282 

503 The substantial Thing .... 283 

504 The very Thing itself .... 283 

505 Such like Things 284 

506 Thinking out of our windows . . 284 

507 36 hours out of the 24 . . . ' 285 

508 They will behind your back, Though . 285 

509 Throwing in even the prophets . . 286 

510 By feeling a Thump .... 286 

21 



Contents 



No. of Pungency Page 

5 1 1 Equal Thwacks 287 

512 Present his Ticket .... 287 

513 The right Ticket 288 

514 Tied too tight 289 

515 Practical Tilth in the church . . . 289 

516 Character and Timber .... 296 

517 All Timber may be broken . . . 290 

518 What a Time! 291 

519 For all the world like a Tin pan ! . .291 

520 Torpid as a Toad .... 292 

521 A Toad-stool just as good ! . . . 292 

522 Geological Toads and rich men . . 293 

523 Too bad 294 

524 Nobody's Tooth can ache like theirs . 294 

525 The Top of the family is in the cradle 295 

526 Drilled into and never Touched water . 296 

527 Made Tough and made tender . . 296 

528 The Toughness of a woman . . . 297 

529 The original Tow .... 297 

530 Raphael's Transfiguration . . . 297 

531 Different Translations .... 299 

532 Tremendously governed .... 299 

533 Trip-hammer life 300 

534 You had better Trot down . . . 300 

535 Trust and gas — Moonshine and prosperity 30 1 

536 Try it on 301 

537 Tug-boat men 302 

538 Tump you out into the street . . 302 

539 Pride and vanity must be Tuned up . 303 

540 Turn to and go to cursing Providence . 304 

541 On the Turnpike road .... 305 

542 Just as the clock struck 12 . . . 305 

22 



Contents 



No. of Pungency 

543 $20,000 . . . . \ 

544 Till Twilight .... 

545 A Twilight-faced, bat-like Christian 

546 Dudley Tyng and Christ 

547 " Umbrella," or " Harvest," or something 

of that sort .... 

548 Under-draining .... 

549 You have got to go Unfixed . 

550 Always wanted Union, you know 

551 Unions . . 

552 Up-and-down love 

553 The Upper story 

554 Better not prophesy Up-stream . 
.555 Us Republicans 

556 Varnish religion — Tracl; Society . 

557 Sunlight with Vegetables 

558 Men good for Veneering 

559 Vermin vs. brethren 

560 Passions and Vermin . 

561 Virginian courage and foxes' tails 

562 Power-loom ought to Vote . 

563 When men Walk on a timber . 

564 From Wall Street to heaven 

565 Wardrobe of righteousness 

566 I'll Warrant you . 

567 Saints before they had Washed a year 

568 Trouble Washes all skins alike . 

569 Washington and respectable meannesses 

570 The eternal Waste-basket 

571 A Watch to steer a ship by . 

572 Water-logged saints 

573 You are Water-logged, sir ! . 

23 



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3*4 

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Contents 

No. of Pungency Page 

574 These smooth, Waxy characters . .321 

575 God Went into life .... 322 
$76 Form, color and What not . . . 322 

577 Pray and be burned, and What not . 323 

578 What under the sun did he preach about ? 323 

579 God does not Whip men through their 

coat and vest 324 

580 Walk me and Whisk me and set me down 325 

581 Whether the President drinks Whiskey 325 

582 Black and White 326 

583 Where it will make you Wince . . 327 

584 All their virtue at the Window . . 327 

585 Wipe their mouths, say long prayers, etc. 328 

586 So easy — Paints to Wipe out . . . 328 

587 How like little Witches they a<5l . . 329 

588 Even your pastor Won't . . . . 329 

589 Agitations, plo wings of the World-farm 330 

590 The Vermicular human race . . 330 

591 Worn as your eyes are worn . . .331 

592 The Worse the better .... 331 

593 Wrap a text round a sin . . . . 332 

594 Written down an ass .... 332 

595 Zero .... .... 332 



24 



PREFACE 



I THINK that the minister of God has 
carte blanche liberty to touch men's 
mirthfulness, even, so far as by so doing he 
can help them toward the right and away 
from the wrong. And I regard all this su- 
perstitious, unsmiling Christianity as a relic 
of the old Vandal times. — Evening Sermon, 
yanuary 8, i860. 



I have never sought to make you laugh 
for the sake of merriment. I should 
have a loathing contempt of myself if I had 
made it a part of my business to peddle 
25 



Preface 

witticisms from the pulpit. But when, in 
the eager rush of thought, an opportunity 
for making a bright stroke has presented 
itself, I have struck, and struck boldly, 
without any care as to whether mirth would 
be excited in my hearers or not ; and I will 
do it again ! There is no part of man's 
nature that is not an open, fair mark. — 
Evening Sermon, Jantiary 8, i860. 



26 



PULPIT 

PUNGENCIES 

SOME men seem to think that the 
Divine Being has different qualities 
of mercies arranged, as apothecaries' medi- 
cines are, on shelves ; and that the angels 
report to Him the condition of men, and He 
administers to their wants according to His 
judgment. Their idea of the way in which "Wen," 

J & t J says God, 

He bestows His blessings is something like " Is 1 he ,,t 11 
this : An angel reports to Him that there 
is a mortal praying for Divine aid, and He 
says, "Who is it?" The angel replies, "It 
is A ; he w r ants such and such a blessing." 
"Well," says God, "what is his condition? 
Is he all right ? Is his case one of need ? 
27 



right ?' 



A and B 



I Pulpit Pungencies 3 

Has he done for himself up to pretty much 
the right point ? " If the replies of the angel 
to these last inquiries are in the affirmative, 
God says, " In that case I will help him ;" 
so He reaches up and takes such a grace as 
is needed, and says, " Hand it down to the 
man/' — Morning Sermon, July 3, 1859. 

n^HERE are thousands of men that seem 
to rejoice in nothing else half so much 
as iniquity. The moment they hear the 
servant of the devil asking, " Have you 
heard the news about A and B ? " they say, 
" What is it ? Sit down and tell it to me ;" 
and it is so relishable to reveal, and so ex- 
quisite to hear, that A and B have been 
doing wrong, and have been found out in 
that wrong, that they fairly gloat over it ! 
This is the very spirit of the devil himself. 
— Morning Sermon, August 7, 1859. 



MEN have despised the body too much, 
but after all, when God made the 
body, He knew what He was about. — Even- 



ing Sermon, Jicly 17, 1859. 
28 



4 Pulpit Pungencies 6 

IT is said that an unhelped cross is the 
heaviest thing a man ever carried ; but ^htlst 16 
a Christ touched cross is about the lightest 
thing a man ever carried. — Morning Ser- 
mon, September 25, 1859. 



H 



OW devoid of anything like true 
Christian aspiration must that man 



Sit on 
the edge 



be, who says, " I will build up my power of mf e 
above that of other men ; I will possess un **" 
myself of more intellectual strength than 
other men possess ; I will be more influen- 
tial than other men ; I will make myself so 
large a heritage that I can retire out of life ; 
and when I get where other men cannot 
bother me any longer, I mean to sit on the 
edge of my abundance, like a bird on its 
nest, and sing songs of joy." — Morning Ser- 
mon, May 8, 1859. 



\li J HAT word did Adam ever speak, or 

* * what manly thing did he ever per- sin ^ e % p 
form, before or after his fall, that was fro, » Adam 
29 



6 Pulpit Pungencies 8 

thought worthy of a record? He has a 
name in the Bible and that is all. His 
name is coupled with one event, and that is 
all. Besides that his life seems to have 
been barren, and worth not one word of re- 
cognition. Such was the man who is sup- 
posed to have been perfeft, and from whom 
the whole race have descended. The race 
has come up hill every single step from the 
day of Adam to this ! — Morning Sermon, 
March 1 1, i860. 

r I ^HERE are periods of children's lives 
Admonished •*■ w T hen we are admonished by God, I 
think, to employ corporeal chastisement. — 
Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 



1 



T is not particularly agreeable to be 
rained upon ; and yet, what if a man, 
being: caught in a shower while on his way 

Ado 00 j 

s ab rmkiin e s to v ^ slt a fri en( i should say, " Oh, what an 

drenchings unfortunate circumstance ! Oh, my raiment ! 

Oh, my skin ! " and what if arriving at his 

friend's house no more drenched in body 

than in mind, he should say, " A sad ca- 

4D 



8 Pulpit Pungencies 10 

lamity has befallen me. I am in great 
trouble. I have met with a serious misfor- 
tune!" Why, everybody would laugh at a w°he 
him, except the host ; he might refrain spn and nss 
from laughing, from politeness ; but every 
child, and every servant, and all the rest of 
the household, would be convulsed with 
laughter. And I suppose the angels have 
abundant occupation to laugh at us, when 
they see what an ado we make about the 
sprinklings and drenchings that we receive 
in the showers which God sends upon us 
in the shape of trials and sufferings. God's 
sons ought to be heroes. — Morning Ser- 
mon, January 15, i860. 

A DVICE to unwilling men is like 
*■*• hail-stones on slate roofs ; it strikes ZIT 
and rattles and rolls clown and does them 
no good. — Evening Sermon, March iS, 

i860. 



hail-stones 



k HERE is much that is called spiritual 
ailment that is nothing but stomachic 



Tl_ 
Spiritual 
ailment thnt is nothing but stomachic vs. 

stomachic 

ailment.— Evening Sermon, May 8, 1839. Ailmcnt 
31 



ii Pulpit Pungencies 13 



w 



HEN they go to your funeral, and 
the minister makes a saint of you, 

Ain't as . , . 

good they won t be so indecent as to lau^h there ; 

as he is ° 7 

but they say when they get home, " I guess 
you and I are safe if he is. The minister 
sent him right straight to heaven, you see. 
If we ain't as good as he is, it's a pity." — 
Morning Sermon, March 27, 1859. 



IV /TEN use religion just as they use 
-L * A buoys and life-preservers ; they do 
not intend to navigate the vessel with them, 
but they keep just enough of them on hand 
to float into a safe harbor when the storm 
comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked ; 
and it is only then that they intend to use 
them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in 
all such life-preservers as that. — Evening 
Sermon, yune 12, 1859. 



Air-holes 



I HAVE known women, saintly in other 
respects, to walk forty years as it were 
girded with sackcloth, on account of antici- 
patory troubles in respefl to their children. 
It seemed as if they fed each child, in its 
32 



13 Pulpit Pungencies 16 

turn, on their own anxieties, all the way up 
from infancy to mature life. — Morning Ser- 
mon, August 14, 1859. 

U 'OUPPOSE the last loaf is baked and 

^ eaten, and the crumbs are eaten, Is Anxious 
am I then to trust in God ? " What better a ** 
can you do ? If you do not know where 
the next loaf is to come from, what will you 
do ? Going to be anxious, are you ? What 
good will that do ? Is Anxious a baker that 
he will bring you bread ? — Morning Sermon, 
April 10, 1859. 

\li 7 HERE I hear young men saying, 
* * " Look at the strong men ! they As if he 

wasn't 

are the men who have money ; a man Anybody 
that hasn't money is knocked and kicked 
about the world as if he wasn't anybody," 
I give them over. — Morning Sermon, May 
8, 1859. 



L 



OOK about you and see what the fruits 

Anybody 

of vour life are, if you want to know . can 



whether you are a Christian or not. If you 
33 



sing hymns 



1 6 Pulpit Pungencies 1 8 

want to know whether there are chestnuts 
on a tree or not, you look on the ground, 
and if you find any there, you know there 
are more where they came from. Go and 
see where the fruit of your Christianity is. 
It isn't in your hymns — anybody can sing 
hymns ; it isn't in your prayers — any man 
can make prayers. — Morning Sermon, Au- 
gust J, 1859. 



M 



AKE the bridge from the cradle to 
manhood just as long as you can. 
aiiuieA e Leave your child a child just as long as you 
of a nun can — especially if you live in a city. Be 
not in haste to force your child into prema- 
ture development by intelligence or by any- 
thing else. Let it be a child and not a 
little ape of a man running about the 
town. — Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 

THE clerk in the dry-goods store has 
an encyclopaedia on his shelves ; if 
he will trace back the fabrics to the country 
from whence they came ; if he will learn 
of the soil, the people, and of their his- 
34 



1 8 Pulpit Pungencies 20 

tory ; the processes of machinery by which 
the fabric was constructed, and a thousand 
things that suggest themselves to the mind, 
there is more than he could learn in a 
lifetime in a store of dry goods even. If 
all {he knowledge that could be obtained 
from the dry goods in Stewart's store were 
searched out, Appleton's book-store would " and 

Appleton's 

not hold the books that would have to be 
written. But if the clerk stands behind £ y ot ^heT s 
the counter all day, and sees in them 
only so many dry goods, they are not half 
so dry as he is. — Evening Sermon, May 8, 

1859. 



T 



O love and obey Him, it is necessary 
that we should approve Him, and we should 

Approve 



Him 



that our moral nature should go out strongly 
in favor of Him. — Evening Sermon, October 
23, 1859. 

A SERVICE done to a fellow beino; is ~, , 
£» The two 

a service done to God. And that is ArmsofGod 

the democracy of the Old and the New Tes- 
tament. These are the two arms of God, by 
35 



20 Pulpit Pungencies 23 

which the world is brought to His bosom. — 
Morning Sermon, June 19, 1859. 

WE cannot approach at these arms- 
length discourses to that familiar 

discourses o 

wisdom that brings information home to 
the very spot and point where it is needed 
by individual character, as the father and 
mother do at the nightly fireside.— Evening 
Sermon, May 8, 1859. 

I think mobs are God's providential asses 
which He makes harrow up the ground 
Asses in time of seed-sowing ; and I think there 
is no other means by which a plentiful har- 
vest is more efifedtually insured. I am 
sorry for any State that never had any 
mobs. I believe New Jersey never had 
one. — Morning Sermo7i, March 27, 1859. 

OR, if men possess great executive ca- 
pacity, and, like an auger, can bore 
the toughest oak ; or, like a chisel — cold al- 
ways — can cut the toughest metals ; or, 
like a hammer, hard-faced, can break the 

36 



23 Pulpit Pungencies 26 

hardest rocks, they think of themselves as 
being accomplishers. " I am the man that 
can achieve ! " is the thought which occu- 
pies their mind when they measure them- 
selves. — Morning Sermon, November 2J y 
1859. 

HTHERE are thousands of persons that 

■*■ are doing but little in the present, Double 
and nothing for the future, who are always ^double 
looking back upon the past, and saying, ea g ie an 
'"Oh, if I had done so and so !" or, "Oh, 
if I had not done so and so ! " And thus 
they make themselves double fools, like the 
double Austrian eagle ! — Morning Sermon^ 
July 24, 1859. 



N 



OW God is available for just such in- God 
spiration as this. — Morning Sermon, 



July 10, 1859. 



T 



HERE is no vice which old Rome. ever 

t . 1 1 • 1 l Wherever 

knew, there is scarcely a wickedness adevii, 
ever practiced on earth that is not legalized to Back him 
in our own land. And that is not the worst ; 
37 



26 Pulpit Pungencies 28 

wherever there is a devil, there is a priest 
to back him. — Evening Sermon, May 15, 
1859. 



I THINK a great many professors of re- 
ligion are just like backgammon boards. 

of religion 

like They look like stately books ; and on the 

Backgam- J J J 

mon boards b ac k f them is inscribed, in large letters, 
" History of England," or " History of the 
Crusades ; " but when you open them you 
find nothing but emptiness, with the excep- 
tion of the dice and counters. And many 
men bear the name " Christian," who are 
inside all emptiness and rattling nothing. — 
Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 



1 



T would seem as if men had been shaken 
shaken up J- U p } n a great bag, and rolled out into 
a Bag {kg various spheres of life, without regard 
to their qualification or fitness. One man, 
who should have been a scholar, finds him- 
self shoving the spade. Another man, who 
was ordained to be a mechanic, finds him- 

33 



28 Pulpit Pungencies 29 

self a preacher. Another man finds himself 
a lawyer ; he is not at all adapted to this 
profession — he is an upright, and honest, 
and good man ; and yet it so happens that 
that is his occupation. — Morning Sermon, 
June 5, 1859. 



A 



CHILD may be indulged, all through 



his infancy and youth, to such a He is not 

, . , , , half Baked; 

degree that he grows up so good natured he i 



and so susceptible to the impressions of 
the time being, that he never lives in a 
space larger than the round minute in 
which he is standing. When a child that 
has grown up thus arrives at manhood, he 
is not half-baked — he is dough ! One thing 
pokes him this way, and another thing pokes 
him that way, and there he is, a miserable 
creature of circumstances. You never 
shall find a man that has grown up such a 
soft not-doing, not-succeeding man, who has 
not a great deal to say to you about the 
mystery of Providence. The mystery of 
Providence ! There is no mystery of Provi- 

39 



dough ! 



29 Pulpit Pungencies 31 

dence about it. There never was a thing 
that was more directly the effedt of a cause 
than is this. — Evening Sermon, January 
29, i860. 

HE goes on to say, " And lest I should 
be exalted above measure through 
the abundance of the revelations, there was 
given to me a thorn in the flesh, the mes- 
senger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should 
be exalted above measure ; " that is, lest he 
should go ballooning to heaven, before God 
summoned him, he was tied down to earth 
with a rope. — Morning Sermon, April 3, 
• 1857 

BALLOONS are made not only to rise, 
but to lift other things and waft them 
g faith easily high above hills and mountains with- 
out jar or obstruction. If the balloon 
is not filled, it is a helpless thing, and can 
neither lift itself nor anything else ; but if 
you fill it with gas it is able to soar away 
and carry many things along with it. And 
you will find the burdens and duties of life 
40 



31 Pulpit Pungencies 33 

heavy enough, unless there is in you this 
heaven-seeking faith and hope that inspire 
and fill them. — Morning Sermon, September 
25, 1859. 



M 



ANY a man will steal or embezzle, 



for years, and never once call it by Bandage 

their eyes 

the right name — never ! If he happen to with their 

rr mouths 

say to himself, " I am a thief/' he will 
spring back as if God had spoken to him ; 
it is like poison to him. " Thief ! " I don't 
believe you could make many men steal in 
that way ; but financiering is a very differ- 
ent thing. Call it " stealing?" O no ; call it 
an arrangement. Call it " thieving ? " O no ; 
call it an unfortunate affair. Call it " rob- 
bery ?" O no ; it is an unfortunate mistake. 
We talk about bandaging our eyes, but I 
think men bandage their eyes with their 
mouths oftener than in any other way. — 
Evening Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



M 



ANY persons say, " It is very Flour 
well to send Bibles and teachers to John the 

Baptist 



the poor ; but I think it would be conferring 
41 



33 Pulpit Pungencies 34 

a greater blessing upon them to send them 
barrels of flour, and coal, and blankets." 
ancT Very well ; send them flour, and coal, and 
Baptist blankets ; I have no objection to that. 
And it may be indispensable that flour 
should aft the part of John the Baptist, and 
prepare the way for Christ ; for a hungry 
man, whose children are crying for bread, 
is not going to read much about Christ till 
he has got himself and his children fed. — 
Wednesday Evening Lecture, September 28, 
1859. 



AND are there not persons here who 
are addifted to bad habits ? Some 

old year 

a Basin, have been drinking, some have been gam- 
bling, some have indulged in illicit pleasures, 
and some have been dishonest in various 
ways. You know what your trouble has 
been. Now, young man, or old man, will 
you not take the old year as a fountain, a 
basin, and wash your hands of every evil 
trait? — Evening Sermon, December 25, 

1859. 

42 



35 Pulpit Pungencies 



T 



HERE are men who seem to take it 
for granted that all that other men 



make is just so much clutched from them, * with 
and that other men's joys are just so much 
taken away from their joys. There are 
men who, after having made ten thousand 
dollars, will say to themselves, if they hear 
that their neighbor has made a poor five 
hundred, " There, I might as well have 
made that five hundred dollars as he." They 
lose the satisfaction of all their thousands, 
because they feel that the five hundred dol- 
lars which find their way into their neigh- 
bor's basket, are taken from them, notwith- 
standing ten thousand dollars are poured 
into their own basket. The Lord grant 
that theirs may be a basket with holes. — 
Morning Sermon, May 8, 1859. 

STRENGTH of feeling in favor of good 
with such persons is regarded as over- 
righteousness ; strength of feeling against B asklt- 
evil is regarded as malignant fanaticism ; ma do ers 
men must be moderate in goodness and in 
their hatred toward evil ; men should main- 

43 



36 Pulpit Pungencies 38 

tain a convenient morality and weave their 
pliant conduct, like basket-makers do their 
slips, over and under, according to circum- 
stances. — Evening Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



The F '.[ were to see a son whose mothers 

Bastard 



TFI 

offspring -A. memory was, in his presence, treated 
with foul scorn and slander, that felt no 
quickening of his pulse, and that felt no 
up-rising of soul-indignation, I should al- 
most believe that the mother was all that 
the slanderer had represented her to be, 
and that this was the bastard offspring. — 
Morning Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



ought to r I ^HERE are thousands of persons who 

trouble -*- seem to think it is their duty to feel 

a Bath bad. If a man, when a stroke of trouble 

comes upon him, rises and shields himself 

from it, as he betakes himself to a thicket 

when overtaken by a storm — if a man does 

not, when troubles beset him, lay himself 

out, and let them fall full upon him, and 

44 



38 Pulpit Pungencies 39 

let them soak in — they suppose he lacks 
sensibility. They think that a man ought 
to take trouble as he would take a bath. — 
Morning Sermon, July 24, 1859. 

OCCUPATION will go far toward the 
restraint and cure of all gross and cold 

Bathing 

animal lusts. When the salacious devil for the 

salacious 

enters a man, let him put spurs to his in- devU 
dustry and work for his life ; make the devil 
pant to keep up with you, and you will run 
him off his feet, and he will be glad enough 
to let you alone. Simple food, hard and 
tiresome work, absorbing occupation and 
plenty of cold bathing — that will withstand 
and control a vast amount of evil inclina- 
tion. Man is to study for these things, and 
then when you have used all these means, 
you may pray. But to set yourself to pray, 
and then go and gorge yourself with stimu- 
lating foods and drinks, and not in any way 
to avail yourself of the proper means, is to 
mock God and cheat your own sou]. Take 
care of yourself first, and then pray after- 
ward. There is nothing better than occu- 
45 



Bean-men 



39 Pulpit Pungencies 41 

pation, and you will find that you can work 
the devil down a hundred times when you 
can wrestle him down once. The devil don't 
like work ; he is lazy, and that is the reason 
he likes lazy people. — Evening Sermon^ 
July 17, 1859. 



MANY men are like a species of beans 
which require to be supported by a 
pole. They will stand up as long as the 
pole stands ; but if some school-boy, desir- 
ing it for a bat, takes it away, they fall to 
the ground, for there is nothing in them to 
make them stand straight. — Morning Ser- 
mon, January 23, 1859. 



YOU have no more right to overtax 
yourself than you have to overtax 

His Beast, J J 

hl bod^ your horse ; and you would think it cruel 
indeed to burden a poor animal beyond its 
strength. A merciful man is merciful to 
his beast — to his own body. — Morning Ser- 
mon, August 14, 1859. 

46 



42 Pulpit Pttngencies 43 

EN, when quiet, are like beasts in 



M : 



menageries. When full-fed, they likeB^isfs 
lie down and stretch themselves, and sleep, menageries 
The tiger and the lion, full-fed and sleepy, 
are as quiet as a lamb ; not so when they 
are hungry — not so when they are aroused. 
Men, in days of prosperity, when their feel- 
ings are placated, are gratified and purr, 
who roar when they are touched by the 
sharp point of iron adversity. — Morning 
Sermon, January 23, 1859. 

^pHERE are good and perfe6tional 

Christians whose piety is like a crown, t o°Be g d 
who, putting it on their heads, say " I am christian 
a Christian ;" taking it off, say, " I am a 
Christian ; I have only left my Christianity 
at home." And then they go out into the 
world, and do all kinds of dirty and mean 
work ; going back again, put on the crown, 
and say, "I am a Christian again!" If 
you are a Christian, you go to bed a Chris- 
tian and get up a Christian ; you are a 
Christian at home, in your store, and every- 
where. — Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 
47 



44 Pulpit Pungencies 46 



B 



jump 



UT it is said that parents may deceive 
their children when their inquisitive- 
Better ness leads them to ask about things which 
they should not know. If they ask about 
things which they should not know, then 
tell them that they should not know. 
"But," people say, "a child puts a parent 
in such a disagreeable position sometimes." 
Well, you hadn't better jump out of it into 
a lie. — Morning Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



1 



WOULD not undervalue the Bible, 
but the revelation of outward nature 
The Bible is infinitely to outlast the Bible as a revela- 
commentary tion of what God has done. For the Bible 
is to the revelation of God a mere com- 
mentary, and the text is more than the 
commentary. — Morning Sermon, July 10, 
1859. 

THIS is rather a hard gospel when you 
come to praftice it. It is one thing 
and to knock down chestnuts from the branches 

Bible 

truths of the trees ; but when you have knocked 
them down you have not overcome your 
48 



46 Pulpit Pungencies 48 

worst difficulty, if the frost has not opened 
the burs. It is harder to open the burs 
and get at the chestnuts than it is to knock 
them down from the trees. And I think it 
is just so in regard to getting instruction 
from the divine Word. It is hard enough 
to get truths from the Bible ; and when 
you have got them, it is harder to carry 
them into daily practice than it was to get 
them. — Morning Sermon, June 19, 1859. 

AXD when respe<5table men, members 
of the church in the nineteenth 
century, look out of the window and see ^lhFof' 
Christ walking up and down protecting 
their interests, making out bills of insur- 
ance for them, how do they say, " Hail, 
Master !" — Morning Sermon, December 25, 

1859. 

THIS is very much provoked and en- 
hanced by the very pernicious habit R e ii g ious 
of novel reading — I mean the reading of pemiaous 8 
religious biographies ; for I think it is one 
of the worst things that can befall a man, 
49 



Christ 

making out 

Bills of 

insurance 



48 Pulpit Pungencies 50 

because in general they are not true, and 
the nearer they come to the truth the more 
lying they are. — Evening Sermon, May 29, 
1859. 

TRUE politeness can rest only in a 
kind disposition ; though its signs 

brutes . 

and names may be counterfeited, yet they 
are never so good as those that are un- 
counterfeited. The man who is only selfish 
and indifferent at heart can not be a gen- 
tleman. As to those gentlemanly bears 
that infest society, those bipedal brutes 
that walk about, flinging their unsavory 
manners in our midst, they are beneath our 
notice. — Evening Sermon, May 1, 1859. 

W J HEN men invoke the name of God 
Black * * they do it with their deepest and 

sounds 

most solemn tones. I associate sounds 
with colors. Certain sounds I associate 
with red, and certain other sounds I asso- 
ciate with yellow ; and when I hear these 
doleful praying sounds I think of black 
and feel as though the man that utters 
SO 



50 Pulpit Ptmgencies 52 

them stood robed in black velvet ! — Wed- 
nesday Evening Lecture, December 28, 1859, 



H 



ERE is a man who goes to the judg- 
ment, and claims to have been a Never 
man of unexceptionable piety. He bears his^oots 
witness that he never violated the Sabbath Sunday 
day ; that he never spoke loud or laughed 
on Sunday ; that he never did any secular 
work on Sunday ; that he never blacked 
his boots, or shaved or cooked on Sunday ; 
that he never rode in the cars or on the 
boats on Sunday. He was always very 
scrupulous about what he did on Sunday. 
On any other day he would not hesitate to 
take advantage of his fellow men ; he would 
not hesitate to gouge the poor woman that 
put his carpet down ; he would not hesi- 
tate to cheat his customers ; but, then, he 
kept Sunday. — Evening Sermon, December 
11, 1859. 



AND then the cruelties of superstition ; 
that is to say, the cruelties which men Blessed 

J extravagance 

have been led by religious superstition to 
Si 



52 Pulpit Pungencies 55 

commit upon their fellow-men — of these I 
might say, as John, in blessed extravagance, 
said of the sayings and doings of Christ. — 
Evening Sermon, October 23, 1859. 



T T 7 HAT a shame, that it should be left 
war * * for war — the most abominable of 

a 

Blister earthly things, a thing that is good only as 

plaster . 

a blister plaster is better than inflammation 
— to illustrate what ought to have been il- 
lustrated by the church ! — Morning Sermon, 
March 4, i860. 



DO you not live day by day, as if noth- 
ing were more certain, and nothing 
you « re half could give you less trouble than the matter 

burned 

of living ; as if it were rolled out for days 
to come, whereas it is but a hand's breath ; 
it is but a taper long, and many of you may 
be blown out before you are half burned. — 
Evening Sermon, July 3, 1859. 



MEN. do not take a bank-bill simply 
because it is a bank-bill. They see 
whether it is a genuine bill, and whether 

52 



55 Pulpit Pungencies 56 

the bank it is on is able to pay ; and if it is 
a good bill, and on a good bank, they take 
it on account of the gold there is behind it. 
And so with professors of religion. When 
a man knows there is a great deal of bogus 
religion, he scrutinizes professors to know 
whether they are counterfeit. He wants to 
know whether there is the gold of perform- 
ance behind them. — Evening Sermon, Feb- 
ruary 10, i860. 

"\ T 7 HEN Jonathan Edwards, the bright- 

^ * est lamp of centuries on these Take 
shores, stood forth, ten thousand bats flew Braes 1 
round him, and myriads of moths and mil- in the way 
lers tried to put out his light, and he was 
regarded as a great innovator ; but in our 
time there is no lack of men who worship' 
Jonathan Edwards. And, strange to say, 
the very men who worship these bright 
examples of Christian heroism, take their 
old bones, as Samson took the jaw bone of 
an ass, and stand in the way of the truths 
which they sought to establish. — Evening 
Sermon , December 11, 1859. 
53 



57 Pulpit Pungencies 58 



A 



GOOD Christian needs to be born 
Well Bom ^ ^ again, but it is very necessary that 
first bom he should have been well born when he 

was first born. — Evening Sermon, February 

10, i860. 



HERE is a man who is sowing what 
appears to be black ashes. A 
Botanical friend accosts him, savin gt, "What have 

sincerity ; y o» 

you got in your bag?" He learns that it 
is the hulls of buckwheat — the chaff of old 
wheat ; and he says, " What are you sowing 
chaff for ? " " Why," the man replies, " I 
have the impression that if a man is only 
faithful and sincere, it makes no difference 
what he sows ?" Doesn't it make a differ- 
ence ? Suppose a man should sow couch- 
grass, thinking that he was going to get 
timothy hay ? Would he ? Suppose a man 
should set out crab-apple trees in his or- 
chard, and think that he was going to get 
fall-pippins ? Would he ? Suppose a man 
should sow that most detestable of all de- 
testable seeds, the Canada thistle, and say 
that that was wheat ? Would any amount 
54 



58 Pulpit Pungencies 60 

of botanical sincerity on the part of this 
fool secure to him a harvest of anything 
better than the seed sown ? — Evening Ser- 
mon, October 16, 1859. 



T 



HERE are other men who live in 

their imagination. They dream all Upand 

their life lonsr. On a special impulse they and out 
r r j Both ways 

open their eyes, and see things as they 
are ; but the moment the hard, practical 
necessity which disturbs them has given 
way, and they are at liberty to do what 
they love to do best, back they sink into 
day dreams, and dream up, and down, and 
out both ways ! — Morning Sermon, August 
7, 1859. 



1 



F you send the colored people away, 
white people, who are useful in higher 



departments of labor, will have to take their Top and 

Bottom 

places. And who will supply the places of 
those that go down to take the places of 
the negroes ? Why the class next above 
them. When you take away the bottom of 
society the top must necessarily come 
SS 



60 Pulpit Piingcncies 61 

down. If a man despises his feet and cuts 
them off, down goes his head. For every 
single inch that he cuts off from his feet, he 
brings his head down an inch. And if the 
top of society, despising the bottom, takes 
it away, it must come down in proportion to 
the amount that it takes aw r ay. — Morning 
Sermon, July 17, 1859. 



THE nearer a man stands to the gate 
of heaven, the worse is sin in him ; 

Bottom 

charitably an d the nearer a man stands to the gate of 
perdition — if there are any degrees in sin — 
the less heinous is sin in him. Therefore 
Jesus Christ, when He stood before those 
sacred men, the priests of the sanftuary, 
who stood at the very top of knowledge, 
pointing to the prostitutes who stood in the 
very dregs of life, said to the proud priests : 
" The publicans and harlots shall go into 
the kingdom of God before you." If Christ 
were to walk in the streets of New York 
now, there would be the same terrible exco- 
riations ; if things were brought to the level 
$6 



6 1 Pttlpit Pungencies 64 

of the New Testament in our times, it 
would bring down the top terribly and lift 
up the bottom charitably. — Evening Ser- 
mon, May 15, 1859. 



M 



EN have a little boat of piety, which 



runs up and down the waves of Bow rigged 

with the 

their experience ; but their life is a great passions 
hull of selfishness, the bow of which is 
rigged with the lower passions. — Morning 
Sermon, June 12, 1859. 



1 



THINK that he is the best man who The most 

t -, -, , . 7, r Boy in him 

has the most boy in him. — Morning 
Sermon, Angus t 14, 1859. 

THOUSANDS of boys are dreaming 
of growing suddenly rich — and I call 
a man a boy as long as he is foolish ; so ofaiiages 
that the boyhood of a great many, you see, 
goes with them clear through life ! There 
are thousands of boys, of all ages, that are 
dreaming about going to bed poor, and 
waking up rich. — Evening Sermon, Febru- 
ary 5, i860. 

$7 



butter 



65 Pulpit Pungencies 67 

SOME men are like beggars that have 
sometimes come to my door. They 
and said, " Will you not give me some bread 
and butter?" I took them at their word, 
and gave them some bread and butter ; 
but it was a quarter of a dollar that they 
wanted ; they did not want the bread and 
butter at all ; so when they turned to go 
away, they threw it behind them. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, June 5, 1859. 



w 



E are a part of His husbandry, " Ye 

are God's husbandry." For you 

ngm pj^ thinks. For you he tills. He is 

breaking in your disposition. — Evening 

Sermon, October 16, 1859. 



N 



OW, if a man means to walk, he 
must have a clear course in order 



to gain anything like a gait or a majesty 



Breaks up 

into 

all manner of 

antics Q f movement, or a sweep and power of 
movement. But if a man starts to walk, 
and says, " Where shall I put my foot ? 
Well well, there, I guess. Well, where 

58 



6 J Pulpit Pungencies 68 

shall I put the next one ? Well, there" 
and then he takes it back to see if it is 
right, and then puts it down again ; then r into ap 

all manner of 

he stops and says, " Perhaps it is the antics 
other foot." Now this is to walking just 
exaftly as the course which many per- 
sons pursue with regard to becoming per- 
fect. They never think, but they stop to 
see if it is right ; and so their feelings 
are started, and then pulled back ; they 
are chafed like a horse that is not per- 
mitted to go, and is whipped for not going, 
till he breaks up into all manner of antics, 
and it is happy for them if they do not 
break away from the vehicle entirely. — 
Evening Sermon, May 29, 1859. 

THE great commandment of the law 
is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy . . 

J ' J Only room 

soul, and with all thy strength, and with take i)r eath 
all thy mind " — and then there is not a 
great gulf between the two parts of it, 
but only room to take breath — " and thy 
neighbor as thyself." They come right 
59 



Broad- 
leaved 
experience 



68 Pulpit Pungencies 70 

together, as twins. — Morning Sermon, Au- 
gust 7, 1859. 

IT is how much of the invisible we can- 
bring into this life that makes this 
life rich and valuable. I will tell you a 
secret of gardening. Turnips and other 
crops that have long roots, and depend 
mostly for their nourishment on the soil, 
exhaust the soil ; while those crops that 
have broad leaves, and take the greater- 
portion of their nourishment from the air, 
organizing it, and turning it into the soil, 
enrich the soil. Now let me tell you that 
that- which makes this life rich is that 
broad-leaved experience which derives its 
support from the air of the future world. — 
Morning Sermon, March IX, i860. 

I HAVE no doubt that it would be a 
sad thing to have a child's spirit 
broken ; but I do not remember ever to 
have met with an instance of such misfor- 
tune, and therefore I cannot speak know- 
ingly on this pointy I do not think our 
60 



Broken 



yo Pulpit Pungencies 72 

American children suffer from having their 
spirits broken too early ! — Evening Sermon, 
February 26, i860. 



1 



THINK God makes men, in some 



respects, as he makes tulips. In the children 
r . > 1 1 are Bulbs 

autumn 01 the year the next year s blossom 

is stored up, all ready to come forth, and 

there is food enough in it to get it out of 

the ground. Children are bulbs. There 

is parent enough in them to last till they 

can organize character for themselves. — 

Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 



1 



F your God is made out of conceptions 
derived from the great and heartless 



round of the natural world ; if you have coming 

down 

a great crystalline God, such as philosophy to Burrow 
deduces from the material globe, you can 
conceive of no such thing as his detracting 
from his dignity by coming down to bur- 
row, as you call it, in this lower sphere. — 
Morning Sermon, October 23, 1859. 
61 



J3 Pulpit Pungencies 75 

HHHERE is nothing, I suppose, more 
busy in sultry summer days than 
do-nothings flies are, and what a world of trouble they 
take to report their activities, buzzing and 
flying everywhere ; and what is there on 
earth ever effe6ls so little ? Many people 
are like them ; they are exceedingly busy, 
but they do nothing. — Evening Sermon, 
July 17, 1859. 



ii A H! " says he ' " l think l wil1 g0 ' 

But and if *^~^ too > but" — bitty you know, is the 

hell-gates g ate out Q f W ] 1 J C ] 1 gj} J^U Comes • or h e 

says, " I will go if" — and if is the other 
leaf of that gate, for it is a double-leaved 
one.— Morning Sermon y December 11, 1859. 



^T EVER, when you see a thing to be 
* right, stand skaking and quaking, 
and say, "But then." That "But then" 
is a devil damned. If and but have de- 
stroyed more souls than any fiend in hell. — 
Morning Sermon , May 22, 1859. 
62 



But then 



76 Pulpit Pungencies 77 



A 



MAN may be a good citizen, whether 
he takes one side or the other of 



the tariff question ; whether he believes in Button up 

my pocket 

banks, or disbelieves in them ; whether he 
is in favor of usury laws, or is opposed to 
them. But what would you think of the 
good citizenship of a man who really be- 
lieved that stealing was not a sin ? The 
more thoroughly a man believes this, the 
worse he is ; and if I were to hear a man 
say, " I am perfectly sincere when I de- 
clare that I do not believe stealing is 
wrong," I should button up my pocket 
whenever he came near me! — Evening 
Sermon, December 18, 1859. 



H 



AVE you ever seen a tree growing 
out of its appropriate latitude ? 



Here is a careful man who has a peach s?age- a 

driver's 

tree nailed out on the south side of a Button 
wall. He covers the roots with straw, 
binds bandages around the trunk, and 
wraps up all the branches and leaves, so 
that every part of the tree shall be ex- 
posed as little as possible. When it gets 
63 



J J Pulpit Pungencies 79 

to be five years old, he calls you to rejoice 
with him because it has ten peaches on 
it. You wonder that it is possible for a 
peach tree to grow, and bear fruit, in such 
a situation as that is in ; and yet there are 
ten real peaches on it, almost as big as a 
stage-driver's button. — Morning Sermon, 
April 10, 1859. 



RELIGION is to the soul what health 
is to the body — it is the right order- 
B b uzz S ing m S °f a ^ tne faculties. Many persons 
think it is confined to certain faculties, 
which must be set buzzing at particular 
times. — Morning Sermon, September 1 8, 

1859. 



A world of 
Buzzing 



THERE is not one man that is smart 
where there are twenty men that 
think they are ; and many men are smart 
only as flies are : they make a world of 
buzzing, but do not make much else. — 
Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 

64 



8o 



Pulpit Pungencies 



81 



HOW many ten thousand times, in 
your day and in mine, is " the 
peace of the Church" urged as an excuse 
for her not performing certain of her 
duties. As if the Church were of any 
account, except as an instrument ; as if it 
were anything but a cannon-ball which 
God fires out of the Gospel, whose busi- 
ness is to bound and rebound through the 
world, without regard to its own preserva- 
tion, but in such a way as to do the most 
execution in the great battle against sin 
in which it is employed. Think of a 
cannon-ball whose only care was that it 
might not get bruised ! — Morning Sermon, 
May 22, 1859. 



Careful 
Cannon- 
ball 



N 



OW the Roman Catholic Church is 
like an old tree in my father's 
orchard, which I -have recently visited. 
There were many dead branches upon it, 
but there still remained two living branches. 
I remembered the place where the tree 
stood. I knew that it used to bear good ap- 
ples. — Morning Sermon, January 30, 1859. 

65 



Catholic 
Church 

Used to bear 
good 
apples 



82 Pulpit Pungencies 84 

OINCERITY is a very good thing, but 
farmers ^ it cannot make grain out of chaff. 
And that man who thinks that it makes 
no difference what he believes, so long 
as he is sincere, is a chaff farmer. — Even- 
ing Sermon, October 16, 1859. 



II 7E are living on a flight of stairs in 
Chamber this world, and we shall not touch 

the chamber floor till we touch the vesti- 
bule of heaven. — Morning Sermon, March 
11, i860. 



floor 



I DO not wonder that, with the thought 
which most Christians have of God, 

before the ' 

of God tri ey are slow to go to Him. What man 
would not be afraid to make prayers to 
a thunderbolt, if he expefted that the re- 
sult of every prayer would be to bring a 
bolt down upon his head ? I should not 
want to charge up before the throne of 
God, if it were like charging before a 
battery. — Morning Sermon, Jidy 3, 1859. 
66 



85 Pulpit Pungencies 87 

f~^ OD says, "Take no thought what ye 
^- r shall eat ;" and it seems to me He 
needs not to say this more than once to a cheap 

to trust as 

Christian. Do the things you can, and do to fret 
them cheerfully. Sing while you work. 
It is as cheap to trust as to fret. — Morning 
Sermon, April 10, 1859.' 



T 



HE promise of God is not this : "Do 
you declare what you want, and be 



pious, and I will see that the plan which °prom°ise n 

to sign our 

you mark out is filled up." He doesn t check 
promise that if we will draw a check, fill- 
ing up the blank with the sum which we 
want, He will sign His name to it. — Even- 
ing Sermon, February 10, i860. 



I WILL not go at large into the subjecl 
of games. I do not think that, under 

° No harm 

ordinary circumstances, there is harm in in che r ckers 
playing checkers, or backgammon, or chess back s ;immon 
— that noble game — unless it is allowed 
to consume too much time. — Evening Scr- 
moiiy November 20, 1859. 

67 



88 



Ptdpit Pungencies 



89 



A trowel 

better 

than 

a Chip 



I LOOK upon the Roman Catholic 
Church as being dead in one branch, 
and another, and as being bark-bound and 
worm-eaten, but as having some real good 
sap in it yet, and some living boughs, 
and as bearing some fair fruit ; and I can 
say, " God be thanked for the good in the 
Roman Catholic Church." " But," says 
one, "do you think one religious system 
as good as another?" By no manner of 
means. There are systems that seem to 
me to be wonderfully adapted to avoid 
the evil and promote the good, and to be 
as much better than some other systems 
as a mason's trowel is better than a chip 
with which to lay brick in a wall. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, January 30, 1859. 



God 
never said 
"Chisel" 



G 



OD made timber grow, but He never 
^ made a house. He made timber 
grow, but He never built a bridge. He 
made timber grow, but He never, in all 
the history of creation, put a tool into a 
man's hand. He never said " saw," or 
"chisel," or "mallet," or "hammer," or 
68 



Chisel 



89 Pulpit Pungencies 90 

" nail." — Mom ing Sermon, J a n 11 a ry 15, 

i860. 

IT is bv a man's theologv, and not by 
his life, that he is usually judged. 
If I say of a man, " Is he a good man?" et stSne° ut 

T , , . with a 

I receive the answer, "Ao; he s a L 111- jead^ 
tarian." It is understood at once that if 
a man holds to the Unitarian doctrine he 
cannot be good. I ask of another, " Do 
you consider him a good man?" "No; 
he's a Swedenborgian." I say of another, 
4, Is he good?" "No ; he cannot be good, 
for he's a Universalist." But be it far from 
me to judge a man by what he believes. 
A person can be as good with one system 
as another. If you were to ask me whether 
I think a man can get out the stone for a 
building with a lead chisel, I should say, 
u I should not think he could ; at any rate, 
give me a good steel chisel." But suppose 
that in some way a man does continue, 
with a lead chisel, to get out the stone for 
his building, I am not to look at the build- 
ing, and when I see it is well built, say it 

69 



go Pulpit Pungencies 91 

isn't a good piece of workmanship, be- 
cause he cut the stone with a poor chisel. 
I should rather marvel at his being able to 
produce so good a structure with such in- 
ferior means. — Morning Sermon, January 
30, 1859. 



T 



O watch to see what is awkward in 
others ; to search out the infirmities 
c£St °f men 5 t° go out like a street-sweeper, 
than you are ^ a universal scavenger, to collect the 
faults and failings of people ; to carry these 
things about as if they were cherries or 
flowers ; to throw them out of your bag 
or pouch, and make them an evening re- 
past, or a noonday meal, or the amusement 
of a social hour, enlivened by unfeeling 
criticisms, heartless jests, and cutting sar- 
casms ; to take a man up as you would a 
chicken, and gnaw his flesh from his very 
bones, and then lay him down, saying, with 
fiendish exultation, " There is his skele- 
ton" — this is devilish! You may call it 
by as many pretty names as you please, 
but it is devilish ! and you will do nothing 
70 



91 Piripit Pungencies 92 

worse than this when you go to hell ; for 
you may expe6l to go there if you have 
such a disposition and do not change it. 
Talk about cannibalism ! Cannibals never 
eat a man till he is dead. They are nearer 
Christ than you are, a great deal ! — Morn- 
ing Sermon, October 16, 1859. 



N 



O man has a right to say, " I will 
take the regality of power which 



Chrysalis 

I have, and carve out a place, and store men 
it with abundance, and go in there and 
enjoy myself for the rest of my life." The 
life of such a man is the inse6l life. There 
is a worm to begin with. This worm goes 
into himself to take his ease, and becomes 
a dead, juicy chrysalis. A worm, a butter- 
fly, a sack of juice : these are the three 
forms of inseft life. And how many men 
are there that are worms in their begin- 
nings, who, when they have gone through 
their crawling period, wing their way in 
the summer warmth for a time, and then 
go back into a substantial chrysalis state ! 
— Evening Sermon , yanuary 15, i860. 
71 



93 Pulpit Pungencies 96 



Y 



OU will find that the Christians of 
each particular church are so like 
what church each other, that a discerning mind, on 

he . & 

belongs to seeing a Christian, can tell what church 
he belongs to. — Wednesday Evening Lec- 
ture y Nov ember 16, 1859. 



r I "HE Church has come to be popular ; 
■*• and getting into the Church is not 
getting into God's kingdom, by any means. 
— Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 



The Church 
vs. 

God's 
kingdom 



A Church 
for heU 



YOU will never need for a corrupt 
minister : there is a church for 
hell as well as for the san6tities. — Evening 
Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



£> 



1 



Tru-tin; 



member 



HAVE heard business men say that, 

so far from trusting a man because he 

church ~ was a church member, they were inclined 

to be rather more suspicious of him on that 

account, because they thought he was apt 

to use his righteousness as a garment under 

which to practice dishonesties. — Morning 

Sermon, yune 26, 1859. 

72 



97 Pulpit Pungencies 98 



N 



EW YORK is a honey-comb, in every 
cell of which are enacted scenes of 



untold wickedness ; and there is nothing wouldn't be 

a Circum- 

related of the devil, in legend or in monk- stance 
ish fable, that is not outmastered and over- 
drawn in the haunts of vice and" corruption 
in the lower parts of that city. And yet 
men laugh at the credulousness of those 
who believe that God would permit the 
existence of a devil. If he would permit 
the existence of a man, he would permit 
the existence of a devil ; for a devil would 
not be a circumstance to such men as I 
have described! — Evening Sermon, Octo- 
ber 23, 1859. 



A 



XD as she [Mary Magdalene] stood 
there weeping, probably almost un- 



Cleansed 

conscious of what she did, she stooped by her 

1 way of 

down and looked into the sepulchre, and livln s 
saw what those two great men did not see 
— very likely, too, because their eyes were 
so rude and coarse. But the woman's eye, 
that had been cleansed by her way of 
73 



98 Pulpit Pungencies 100 

living, had a discerning power which, it 
seems, had yet to be given to the others. — 
Wednesday Evening Lecture, February 1, 
i860. 



T 



HERE is a providence of God, a 
thinking of God for us ; but it is 
providence no such providence or thinking as ever 

never 

: 5 takes the place of, or interferes with, our 
own personal wisdom. There is a provi- 
dence of God, but it never weaves cloth. — 
Evening Sermon, "July 3, 1859. 



T3E content with such things as ye 
-U have." Well, you are not. God 

Parental # ' 

c^S- ^ as &i yen )' ou a f am ily of children ; and 
daylong one looking upon your household from 
the outside would say, " How happy that 
father and that mother must be with such 
children." But a person who is brought 
into near relations with you will find that 
parental anxiety is clucking after those 
children all the day long. — Morning Ser- 
mon, June 5, 1859. 

74 



io i Pulpit Pungencies 102 



w 



HAT a coarse book this Bible is. 
It has never been to school to 



get refined, so we have to take it just as coarsebook 

. . . _. . . . _ r this Bible 

we find it. These are plain words : " If is 
a man say, I love God, and hateth his 
brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth 
not his brother, whom he hath seen, how 
can he love God, whom he hath not seen ?" 
Show me a man that is proud and over- 
reaching, who professes to be pious, and I 
will tell you that his piety is all flummery. 
There is not a bit of piety in such a man. 
— Morning Sermon, y-une 19, 1859. 



DEEDS of kindness must not be occa- 
sional, and as enforced duties ; they 
must be the spontaneous a6ls of an abiding No ^°^" ng 
disposition of Christian love. They must 
grow out of you as grass grows out of the 
summer-warmed ground. You don't have 
to coax grass to grow; you can't coax it 
not to grow. — Morning Sermon, October 16, 

'185* 

75 



to grow 



103 Ptdpit Ptmgencies 103 



w 



HEN we go into a family, can any- 
thing be sweeter than to see those 

Cobwebbing , ... 

the other pleasant, glowing looks, and hear those 
"My dear" kind words, which stir the memories of 
tender associations ? How much of hea- 
ven there is sometimes in the blush upon 
the mother's cheek, and how much of the 
heart's best knowledge shines in the fa- 
ther's face, drawn out by those incidental 
allusions which go direct from heart to 
heart. But suppose we find every clay 
each one of the parents cobwebbing the 
other from morning until night with well- 
spun words, winding them round and 
round in a flimsy net-work and shallow 
pretence of affection. I think there are 
some men who never speak kindly until 
they are on the eve of a broil ; they say, 
" My dear," and then each word pierces 
sharper and sharper, till the quarrel be- 
comes almost intolerable.— Evening Ser- 
mon, May 15, 1859. 



76 



104 Pulpit Ptcngencies 106 



w 



Cockles 



E should brush down all the infinite 

b, , r Infinite 

webs woven m the corners of Cobwebs 

the house of duty. — Morning Sermon; June 

26, 1859. 

r I ^HEN, next, there are what may be 
-*- called chaff farmers in spiritual hus- 
bandry ; I do not know that there are any w jjj d ^ )f 

such in natural husbandry, but you can 
conceive what they would be there. Sup- 
pose you should find a farmer who said that 
he had been pondering upon the theory and 
■ science of farming ; that he w T as satisfied 
that farmers had been doing injustice to 
many kinds of seeds ; and that he felt as- 
sured that if a man would sow cockle seeds, 
and do it sincerely, God would give the 
increase ? So He would — of cockles ! — 
Evening Sermon, October 16, 1859. 



1 



T is not in the power of all the Boling- 
brokes, and Voltaircs, and Tom Paines, 



and Rousseaus, and other great names that devils 



write infidel matters — it is not in the power 

of all the locust host of infidels — to do that 

77 



Colporteurs 



The 



1 06 Pulpit Pungencies 108 

damage to true religion which may be done 
by an unfaithful church, or by the ungodly 
deVif's testimony, in practical life, of professors of 
opo eurs re jjgj on . f or b e ixaying Christians are the" 
devil's colporteurs, who peddle tracts of in- 
fidelity ; not printed tracts, but living 
epistles — their own examples. — Morning 
Sermon , March 2J, 1859. 



F 



OR I hold that the prejudice which 
exists against color, is not asrainst 

Eat with o -' & 

and^iTe color ; and it is not against carelessness, 
wnh Color nor indolence, nor impertinence ; because 
you shall find, in nearly twenty States, that 
wherever color is subordinated to a man's 
interests, he can eat with color, and sleep 
with color, and ride with color, and do 
everything with color. — Morning Sermon, 
July 17, 1859. 



A PAINTER undertakes to paint a por- 
trait of my friend. When he has 

Coming it J 

drawn the outline of the head, I say, " You 

have the right idea." After he has laid on 

78 



108 Pulpit Pungencies no 

the dead coloring, I say, " I think I see 
what you are going to do." I step into his 
studio just after he has marked out the 
features, and I say, " That's coming it" — 
Morning Sermon, April 24, 1859. 

I THINK every man who is not a com- Everyman 
not a 
mentator must know what Paul meant. Commenta- 
tor 

— Morning Sermon, November 6, 1859. 



w 



HEN a church was about to be built 
in a certain town, the people were 



Compro- 

divided with reference to where it should mise 
stand, and the minister had to preach a ^upf 
very strong sermon on the subjeft. This 
sermon had the desired effeft. It even 
brought tears to the eyes of the deacons — 
and it is a good sign when deacons cry. 
The next morning one deacon called on 
another, and said to him, " Our minister is 
right, and we are imperiling the cause of 
Christ by our dissension, and I have come 
to tell you that we must compromise ; and 
now, you must give up, for I can't." — Morn- 
ing Sermon, May 29, 1859. 
79 



1 1 1 Pulpit Pungencies 1 1 2 



1 



X some lands a man is considered very 
rich if he has twenty-five thousand 
Compromise dollars. In other lands fifty thousand dol- 

on 

S100..000 Jars makes a man so rich that he scarcely 
feels any motives for further accumulation. 
In other countries it requires a hundred 
thousand dollars to make a man rich. I 
suppose that the average of this congrega- 
tion would compromise on a hundred thou- 
sand dollars — principally, however, because 
they do not expect half or a quarter of that 
sum ! — Everting Sermon, February 5, i860. 



1 



THIXK I can show ambitious men, 
who seek political preferments, their 
island tvpes on the sea-shore, on Conev Island, 

water-logs 

for instance. There you will see old, worth- 
less sticks of drift-wood come rolling in on 
the crest of some wave : these are now the 
types of political men coming into power. 
In the course of a year or so they are 
sucked out into the sea again by the ebb- 
ing and flowing of the tide : then they are 
types of political men going out of power ; 
and whether coming in or going out, they 
80 



1 12 P:i!p:i Pa vgent 1 15 

are merely old, decayed water-logs, which 
are fit for nothing, not even to be burned. 
— Morm .v.. May 5. 1S50. 



I HAVE seen men that had a great deal 
too much conscience. Their con- 
ice stood in the way of their useful- 
ness. One of our noblest poets told me 
that he would be much more useful if he 
had not such a supersensitive conscience. — 
Evening Sermon^ November 6, 1S59. 



Too much 

.ence 



S 



NOW is conservative rain. It is good 

to keep ; and it is good for little Cor f now ' 



onsc 

else until it stops being snow, and comes ram 
to be rain. — Morning Sermon, December 4, 



T 



HE importation and exportation of w 
wares contraband to heaven is going to n hSv^ 



on all the time ! — A mon y October 

16, 1859. 

Si 



1 1 6 Pulpit Pungencies 1 1 8 

COPYISTS are not artists, any more 
than a dog is an artist because he 
draws a little baby in a wagon behind him ! 
— Morning Sermon, March n, i860. 



dogs 



I 



HAVE known a good many of these 
rich men ! I always cotton to the 

I always 

Cotton to rich ! I always make friends with them, 

the rich J 

that I may find out what sort of men they 
are, what kind of a life they live, and how 
they enjoy themselves ! I was very much 
struck by a fa6t that was related to me 
of a very rich man — he is well known in 
New York, but I will not mention his 
name — by his agent. Said he, " I have 
often heard him turn in his bed in the 
night, saying, ' Oh God ! oh God ! oh God ! 
When will it be morning!'" It did me 
good ! — Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 

WOU have taken notice that in New 
-*- York it makes a great difference be- 

Now Y"orK. 

courts fore what court you bring a case at law. 
There are different judges in different 
courts, and justice varies, praftically, with 
82 



1 1 8 Pulpit Pungencies 1 20 

the men who decree it. You can obtain 
an acquittal at one court, while you would 
get a convi6tion at another. When a man 
has a case to be tried, therefore, he wishes 
it to come before that court whose verdift 
will suit him. — -Morning Sermon, November 
27, 1859. 

PERSONS do a great deal of unre- 
quited Christian work here, one with 

One winter 

another, which does not seem to produce to cmck the 

. she11 

any fruit. I think it will bear fruit in 

heaven. They will see it there. You know 
that if you plant peach stones, they do not 
come up the same year. It always re- 
quires one winter to crack the shell. — 
Wednesday Evening Lecture, November 16, 

1859. 



1 



F you cut off a branch of a tree, and 
immediately bandage it, so as not to 



allow the air to get at the wound, it will on a 

Cracked 

grow again ; but if you crack a crystal friendship 
vase, no growing process in creation will 
repair the damage. It is cracked glass 

83 



120 e Pulpit Pungencies 122 

forever and forever. Nothing will take out 
the crack. Now, although a cracked friend- 
ship, like a cracked tumbler, may be ce- 
mented, the moment you put it into hot 
water the bottom will fall out, or it will 
come to pieces ! — Evening Sermon y Janu- 
ary 29, i860. 



p 



ERSONS that are fretful in youth 
and in middle age are usually so 
out of through old age, and they go croaking to 

life 

the end of their days, when, reptile-like, 
they crawl out of life. — Morning Sermon, 
July 24, 1859. 



1 



SAY that the idea of removing the 



& 



free colored people of the United 

in his States, when you look at it from the stand- 

p° cket . r 1. . \ • 

point of political economy, is insanity ; it 

is pocket insanity ; and it is enough to send 

a man to the asylum for life, to be crazy in 

his pocket! — Morning Sermon, July 17, 

1859. 

84 



12 3 Pulpit Pungencies 1 2 5 



w 



HAT if a person going on a journey 
of five years should undertake to 



carry provisions, and clothes, and gold Creation 

at his 

enough to last him during the whole time, back! 
lugging them as he traveled like a veritable 
Englishman, with all creation at his back ! 
— Morning Sermon, December 18, 1859. 



N 



OW, God gives every man a circular 
letter of credit for life, and says, 



A 



COMMAND also given in the Bible, 
which seems strange, to children 



Credit 



u Whenever you get to a place where you letter of 
need assistance, take your letter to the 
Banker, and the needed assistance will be 
gi ve n you/ ' — Morn ing Sermon , Decern ber 
18, 1859. 



As though 

especially, whether ungrown or grown, is the thing 
this : " Be ye angry and sin not ; let not p £ r u °gj^ d 
the sun go down upon your wrath." Now, 
parents are perpetually telling their child- 
ren that it is sinful to be angry, and when 
they come to read in the Bible, " Be ye 
angry and sin not," it seems to them as 
8S 



125 Pulpit Pungencies 128 

though the thing were cross-ploughed and 
turned up by the roots. — Morning Sermon, 
May 15, 1859. 

OUFFERING is curative when it is 
later" ^ applied early, when men are not 

it mulcGS 

men Crusty very wicked ; but taken later, it makes men 
crusty. — Morning Sermon, J miliary 9, 1859. 



A 



NY man who has a family round 
about him, whatever it may cost in 

Reading 

prayers the beginning, will do wisely to take up 
W wlth g f am ily prayer. As to reading of it from 
Crutches a ^ 00 ^ every man must have his own 
liberty. It is better to read than not to 
pray ; but it is still better to read from 
your own religious experience than from 
any other volume. A man who walks with 
crutches is better than a man who does 
not walk at all. — Evening Sermon, May 
1, 1859. 

MEN that are bad have, I say, a great 
many good things in and about 
them ; but the question is not whether a 
86 



128 Pulpit Pungencies 1 30 

man has some good or some bad. The 
best men have enough that is bad, and the 
worst men have some good. The question 
is, What should be the cutwater ? — Morning 
Sermon, June 12 , 1859. 



CYPHER both ways, not only toward 
heaven, but also toward hell ; and c p h * r 

' 7 both 

make up your mind what you will do from ways 
a comprehensive calculation, and not a par- 
tial and flattering one. — Evening Sermon, 
December 18, 1859. 

THEREFORE although I would not 
speak contemptuously of any form cypherings 

for 

of words that may have become endeared salvation 
to any man's experience, yet I may say, so 
far as my own experience is concerned, I 
utterly abhor such terms as " God's plan," 
and as the " plan of salvation ; " as though 
there had been endless cypherings, plan- 
nings, fixings and arrangements, and at last 
there was something devised, and God's 
heart uplifted salvation. — Evening Sermon, 
July 10, 1859. 

87 



i3i 



Pulpit Pungencies 



134 



Every 

church 

wants 

somebody 

to Damn ! 



THROUGHOUT medieval Europe the 
Jew was the cursing block of man : 
for you know everybody wants somebody 
to swear at ; every nation wants somebody 
to curse ; every church wants somebody to 
damn. — Morning Sermon, March 4, i860. 



They 

never 

would 

say 

'Damn it !" 



I 



KNOW innocent men who do not 
hesitate to take the name of God 
in vain. They never would say, " Damn 
it ! " but they do not hesitate to say, " Oh, 
Lord ! " which is no better. — Evening Ser- 
mon, November 20, 1859. 



1 wm teii \/OU may wink at wickedness, but God 
what you A won't wink at it. Whatever you 

will get, 

and that think you will get, I will tell you what 

Damnation ! y QU W QJ g^ Jf y QU gj ye U p fae righteOUS- 

ness of God, and that is-, damnation ! — 
Evening Sermon, June 12, 1859. 



Dandling 
troubles 



THERE are a great many persons who 
aft as if they thought petty troubles 
were a luxury ; and they seem never to be 
satisfied without them. They nurse their 
88 



134 Pulpit Pungencies 137 

annoyances, and dandle them, as it were, 
on their knee, seeming determined to bring 
out of them all they have in them.— Morn- 
ing Sermon, July 24, 1859. 



D 



O not be angry by the day. Be angry 



when there is a just cause for it, but Don't 

be angry 

get over it as speedily as possible. A man by the bay 
could not live and be in a constant blaze of 
anger. It is only now and then that one 
can afford to be angry. — Morning Sermon, 
May 15, 1859. 



o 



LD Saxon words are Day of JikU 



ment words ; they are like double- Day of 

Judgment 

edged swords, and cut where they hit. But words 
when we come to speak of evil, we must 
have Latin, or some soft language. I think 
it will take two or three languages for us 
to get along with, soon. — Evening Sermon % 
May 15, 1859. 

THE active period, even in the case of 
the longest-lived men, is only about 
forty-five years. Now, consider what this 

89 



alive 



137 Pulpit Pungencies 139 

period of forty-five years is made up of, and 

Y Sead re how much usable there is in it. There is 

of the a tax of eight hours out of every twenty- 
time that . 
you are four, to begin with, for sleep. You are 

dead one full third of the time that you 

are alive! — Evening Sermon, December 25, 

1859. 



I CAN find a charity in my heart for all 
creatures of guilt except the various 

the 

Devil men who sin deliberately against their fel- 
low-men, to consume them. Such I regard 
as I do the devil ! — Evening Sermon y Feb- 
ruary 12, i860. 



1 



NEVER saw a man bribe himself to 
Devil- ^ use a wicked thing, that did not after- 
and ward falsify and perjure himself. When a 
damned man goes into a business of this kind, 
thinking he will do it for the means of 
doing good, oh, how devil-duped he is, that 
he may be devil-damned ! — Evening Ser- 
mony ytme 12, 1859. 

90 



ideas 



140 Pulpit Pungencies 141 

I SUPPOSE there is nothing more offen- 
sive to men than stealing, where the 
rights of property are involved. Our ideas djS£"«» 
of stealing are perpendicular, and a thou- 
sand feet high. There is nothing like steal- 
ing to us. It is enough to doom a man to 
perdition. But lying is not supposed to be 
so very bad ; and these men who would not 
let a person vary a hair from rectitude on 
the subject of property, when it comes to 
his word, when it comes to his use of de- 
ception as a means of getting property, do 
not think he need be over scrupulous. 
They say, " We must be moderate in our 
ideas of veracity when we are engaged in 
commercial matters. When we are among 
Romans, w r e must do as Romans do ; M and 
all that kind of devil-talk. — Morning Ser- 
mon , June 26, 1859. 



Devil-talk 



LL along the shores of life I see men 
in middle life lay themselves up ; 



A ] 

F\> in middle life lay themselves up ; \\^l 
and there they lie shrinking and cracking, to rJie re ' 
good for nothing on sea or on land. Now, 
9i 



1 1 don't 



141 Pulpit Pzcngencies 144 

if anybody wants to retire, die ! — Evening 
SermoHy July 17, 1859. 

AVOID falsehood in all its varied forms, 
and I repeat, if you sin at all, sin on 
ea?DiA°" the side of truth. Where men give you 
permission to do wrong, let it be as though 
they gave you permission to eat dirt. If 
you were told that you may eat dirt, you 
would say, " I don't want to eat dirt, and I 
won't touch it." — Morning Sermon, June 
26, 1859. 

EVERYBODY sits in judgment on a 
dirty sin ; but clean it, dress it, and 



Sill 



nd polish it, and there are ten thousand people 

burnished 

iniquity who think it is not so sinful, after all. It is 
ragged iniquity that is sinful ; burnished 
iniquity is not quite so wicked. — Evening 
Sermon, May 15, 1859. 

1 have r I ^HERE is no voice in nature that 

Dividend teaches me that God cares for me, 

God'°scare except as he cares for chestnut burrs, and 

fungi, and vines, and bees, and insects. 

92 



144 Pulpit Pungencies 145 

God cares for nature, and cares for me as a 
part of nature. As a part of nature, I have 
my dividend of God's care and thought. — 
Morning Sermon, October 2, 1859. 



F 



OR instance, on Sunday a man wor- 



ships God, sings to God, prays to when 1 

Do 

God, carries around the contribution box reifgion, 

I Do 

for God's sake, takes the sacrament for God, religion 
keeps a sober face for God, walks slowly to 
church and home again for God, and ab- 
stains from reading the newspaper for God ; 
but when he has done all these things for 
God, and the sun is down, " Now," he says, 
" I have got through with my religion for 
to-day. To-morrow I am going into the 
world again." And what are you going to 
do ? " Why, I have a caucus to attend, 
and such and such a man to elect." But 
you are a Christian man, the head of a 
Christian household, and a member of the 
Christian church. " Oh, don't talk to me 
about religion. Religion is religion, and 
the world and politics are different affairs 
altogether. When I do religion, I do reli- 
93 



145 Pulpit Pungencies 146 

gion ; and when I take care of the world, I 
take care of the worlds' — Morning Sermon, 
September 18, 1859. 

IF you were to ask our bankers, " Would 
you associate with a colored man ?' 
a'dTy they would straighten up with insulted dig- 
nity, and say, " I, that am respectably con- 
nected ! " But let a colored man deposit in 
a bank a thousand dollars on Monday, a 
thousand dollars on Tuesday, and a thou- 
sand dollars on Wednesday. Up to this 
time the banker consents to take the money, 
to be sure ; but he is very unceremonious 
in his condu6t to his new customer. On 
Thursday the man deposits a thousand dol- 
lars more, and a thousand dollars more on 
Friday. By this time the banker has 
become a little less reserved in his manner. 
The man continues to deposit a thousand 
dollars every day. On Saturday, when he 
comes, the banker says, " Good morning, 
sir." On Monday the salutation he receives 
is, "How do you do this morning, sir?" 
On Tuesday it is, " I am glad to see you 
94 



146 Pulpit Pungencies 147 

this morning, sir." On Wednesday, " How - 
are your family, sir?" And, if the deposits 
amount to twenty, or thirty, or forty thou- 
sand dollars, " Won't you call upon me, 
sir ? " Ah, there are a great many ways to 
get at men's consciences ! — Morning Ser- 
mon, yuly 17, 1859. 



w 



E not unfrequently hear men say, 
" It is easy for you, who have a 



Down-hill 

good, constitution and a happy tempera- duties 
ment, and who are agreeably circum- 
stanced, to do thus and so ; but if you 
were as bilious as I am ; if you were as 
sick as I am ; if you had to contend with 
such trials at home as I have to ; if you 
were a business man, and you had such a 
harassing business about your heels as I 
have about mine, you would then have as 
much anxiety as I have, and you would fret 
as much as I do. It is very easy to preach, 
much easier than it is to pra6tice." I 
have found that out, that it is a great deal 
easier to preach than it is to pra6lice ; but 
it is nevertheless our duty to practice. 
95 



Down hill 



147 Pulpit Pungencies 149 

God does not exempt you from perform- 
ing all duties except those which you can 
perform down hill. — Morning Sermon, Azc- 
gnst 14, 1859. 

PUBLIC sentiment and law may save 
a man before he has done wrong, but 

way to God 

they damn him after he has done wrong. 
But not so with God. The way to Him is 
down hill. Up hill is down hill, if it be 
toward God! — Morning Sermon, October 
23, 1859. 



YOU shall hear it said of a man : " Ah ! 
that is one of the greatest men the 
dozing,' age has ever produced ; a sound, a deep, a 

dozing 

profound man ; one of the most admirable 
theologians of the nation or the time. Pity 
he hadn't some little knowledge of human 
life. He never could do anything in the 
pulpit. People always went to sleep under 
his preaching ; but to those that could keep 
awake, it was so grand and deep. It was 
massive ! He had such great views of truth, 
and they were so admirably fitted to each 

96 



149 Pulpit Pungencies 151 

other." That is to say, a man who essen- 
tially and totally misses the great idea of 
preaching, that of rearing up in men vital 
sympathy with God, and producing in them 
a thought of the life to come ; a man who, 
missing this great idea, so handles his views 
of truth that while he is dozing, dozing, 
dozing over his manuscript, his hearers are 
dozing, dozing, in their pews : such an one 
is esteemed to be a very sound man ! — 
Morning Sermon, January 30, 1859. 

WHENEVER profane oaths are em- 
ployed to enforce earnestness or swears 

. . ... with a 

express passion, you may be sure it will strong 
not linger long in growth in evil disposi- 
tions. It is not merely irreverence ; a man 
unconsciously becomes profane in every 
sense. When he swears with his heart 
and with a strong draft, it will be always 
burning hot. — Evening Sermon, May 1, 1869. 



w 



E go through life, drawing deep, so 

Drawing 

that the craft on both sides of the deep 



avenue through which we pass are made to 
97 



151 Pulpit Pungencies 153 

hop and bound upon the waves we produce, 
and so that men fostered in prosperity and 
in character rock and grind at the pier, 
and are angry toward us ; and yet we do 
not know what disturbance we are causing. 
— Morning Sermon, jfune 12, 1859. 



WHEN God built this world, He did 
not build a palace complete with 
appointments. This is a drill world. Men 
were not dropped down upon it like manna, 
fit to be gathered and used as it fell ; but 
like seeds, to whom the plow is father, the 
furrow mother, and on which iron and 
stone, sickle, flail, and mill must a<5t before 
they come to the loaf. — Morning Sermon, 
September 25, 1859. 



IF you are roused up by the sight of 
injustice, by the sight of avarice, by 
the sight of cruelty, do what you can at 
once ; do as the bolt does when it lunges 
at the oak ; but don't be, in respeft to your 

98 



153 Pulpit Pungencies 155 

indignation, like a northeast storm, which 
drizzles, drizzles, drizzles from morning till 
night. — Morning Sermon, August 14, 1859. 



1 



DON'T think that conscience is apt to 



be a drug in the market. Some men a Drug 

in the 

talk about being over conscientious ; but I market 
don't think that is a peculiar faculty of men 
in the city of New York. — Evening Ser- 
mon, June 12, 1 859. 



w 



E drink, not to gratify the palate, 
but for a business purpose. That 



Leads 

being the case, we may begin with the down 



to 



milder beverages, just as we begin our fires Drunk 
with pine shavings, not only because we 
can light them so easily, but also because 
we want them to set on fire something 
solider. And wine is stepstone to brandy. 
Beer is stepstone the other way. It does 
not lead up to brandy, but it leads down to 
drunk, and beastly drunk. — Evening Ser- 
mon> November 20, 1859, 

99 



156 Pulpit Pttngencies 158 

P^v R Y cards are very dry indeed. Drink- 
Do- cards *-^ ing and playing are so nearly con- 
nected, that they court each other as almost 
intimate relations and inevitable friends. — 
Evening Sermon, March 4, i860. 

IF there are any men who are too dry to 
live, thev are those who have their truth 

Dry 

c v , ail fixed and figured out, and who sav of a 

Split up o > ^ 

corkwood man who has not such systematic views, 
" He is all afloat." Xow I think that a man 
whose views of truth are not fixed, but who 
holds himself in readiness to receive what- 
ever truth is presented to him, is like a liv- 
ing tree that is all open to the stimulating 
influences of the air ; and I think that a 
man who has got all his truths fixed, is 
like a tree after it has been cut and split up 
into cord wood ; it is dead and dry. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, April 24, 1859. 



H 



0\V is it that we think of God in con- 
Dumb book 1 -^ nection with catechism, and dumb 
Dumb house book, and dumb house, but do not think of 
Him in connection with the living voices 
100 



vice 



158 Pulpit Pungencies 159 

of nature? — Morning Sermon, July 10, 

1859. 

THE same terrible instinct that is in 
many birds of prey, by which they 
have a palate for carrion, and scent it afar ove randover 
off, seems to be in the bosoms of a great Dung-hiu of 
many men in the world. The first hint of 
scandal is like the wine of intoxication to 
them. Their eyes begin to turn, and they 
exhibit the intensest curiosity. " How 
shall the thing be found out ? " they say to 
themselves. " How shall it be opened up ? 
How shall the parties involved be identified 
and convicted ? " And so they chase after 
it, and watch it, and lurk to find it out. 
And if, when they have found it out, it 
proves to be as bad as they thought it was, 
it is a real luxury to them. It does them 
good to their very bones. They are hearti- 
ly glad. They do rejoice in evil. Nothing 
gives them half so much pleasure. They 
mourn over virtue as a cold thing. They 
slide down the sides of it as men slide 
down the sides of frozen mountains. To 
101 



159 Pulpit Pungencies 162 

roll over and over upon the dung-hill of 
vice is their chief delight. — Evening Ser- 
mon, December 4, 1859. 



TV T O man ever used vulgar language but 
Rankiyas ^ ^ his soul also became vulgar; and 

weeds on a . . ,-".,,. 11 

Dung-hm once indulged in, this habit grows as rankly 
as weeds on a dung-hill. — Evening Sermon, 
May 1, 1859. 



IT is edifying to hear a demagogue rail 
at men who have no love of country, 
at selfish men, at men who wish to dupe 
the people ! — Evening Sermon, February 
12, i860. 



Mean 



I 



DO not feel bound to think that I shall 
be a counterfeiter, a burglar, or a pirate. 
refigious I do not feel bound to say to myself, " I 
shall be as mean as if I were a religious 
editor, and as corrupt as if I were a poli- 
tician." — Morning Sermon, January 23, 1 859. 
102 



163 Pulpit Pungencies 165 



M 



EN do not come into life full-born. 
Childhood is but an egg laid, to be childhood 
hatched by human life. Man comes into but 

an Egg 

the world unfledged, and he has to work 
his way up through the exterior shell of 
ignorance, before he can peep or fly. — 
Morning Sermon, October 30, 1859. 

THIS man, who has lived sixty or sixty- 
five years without exhibiting hate or The Egg 
revenge, now says, " As God is my judge, the bird 
I will not rest till I have avenged my 
child." Murder is in his footsteps, and the 
bitterness of deadly hate is in his heart 
He did not know, till now, that they were 
there. You never can tell by the way an 
egg looks what kind of a bird will come 
out of it : it may be eagle ; it may be vult- 
ure. — Morning Sermon, yanuary 23, 1859. 

T T is a sign of progress that opinions in 
■*■ the North have been steadily rising Egg . 
for the last ten years, in spite of the press- sanctl e 
ure brought to bear to make men call evil 
truth, and vice virtue. I look back with 
103 



165 Pulpit Pungencies 167 

unspeakable gladness, though not with any 
pride, to the day when I was called to 
choose. On one side was a despised mi- 
nority, an egg-sanctified minority ; on the 
other side were learning, wisdom, and 
influence. — Evening Sermon, May 15, 
1859. 



ANY notion of God that takes away 
this wide-swinging and far-resound- 
not 
Emasculate ing thunder of indignation, leaves Him 

emasculate, feeble, unfit for heaven, and 
unfit for earth. — Morning Sermon, May 
IS, 1859. 



NATURE is said to abhor a vacuum ; 
but she does not half so much as 
hate men hate to be emptied before God of their 

to be r 

Emptied conscious spiritual excellencies. Bad men, 
when assailed by reasons of goodness, are 
not half so virulent as men occupying a low 
platform when asssailed by a higher plat- 
form. — Morning Sermon, March 2j y 1859. 
104 



1 68 Pulpit Pungencies 172 

IF, in your prophesying, you take God's 
commandments, and turn them end for End for End 
end, you will find yourself prophesy lies. — 
Morning Sermon, yitne 26, 1859. 



THE wise men are those that come out 
The other 
best at the other end, not those that J 1 * 

and this 

dance the nimblest at this end. — Evening End 
Sermon, February 10, i860. 



N 



T EVER lived a man to more purpose Christ 



in the life that now is than Paul did. ^\ 
Christ was not to him only a royal engineer Engineer 
who eighteen hundred years ago cast up a 
highway of salvation from earth to heaven. 
— Morning Sermon, February 19, i860. 



G 



OD has a million men who know how 

How 

to enjoy good health, where he has t( ? Enjoy 



one who knows how to enjoy sickness. — 
Morning Sermon, June 5, 1859. 



sickness 



T 



HERE never was such a family borne Christ's 



arms 



on the heart of a man as our Saviour T l ike 

an Equator 

bore on His heart when He was in this 
105 



172 Pulpit Pungencies 174 

world, and as He bears on His heart still. 
His arms were and are stretched around the 
world like an equator. — Evening Sermon, 
November 2 , 1859. 



AS ye have opportunity, do good unto 
all men," saith the command, " es- 

" Especi- 

was ll dead P ec i a Hy unto them who are of the house- 
longago hold of faith .» but that « eS pecially " was 

dead long ago. — Morning Sermon, October 
16, 1859. 



SUPPOSE you are needy, suppose you 
are about to be pitched out of the 

Pitched out , -. , , , 

of the establishment, suppose you don t know 

Establish- 
ment where to get your daily bread or how to 

pay for your clothes, suppose you have no 

friends, God Almighty is on your side ; 

and do you believe He will not supply your 

wants, when He cares for the birds of the 

air, when He has sprinkled the Bible all 

over with promises? — Evening Sermon, 

May 8, 1859. 

106 



175 Pulpit Pungencies 177 

THE idea of our expatriating a million 
of laboring men is a fancy born Ea ^? a " 
in the brain of a fool, and the father of it 
is the devil! — Morning Sermon, July 17, 
1859. 

NOW, suppose I should fall into a con- 
troversy with a man, and should 
adroitly deceive him ; and suppose, after Exquisite 
having done it, I should come before you, 
and say, " I told an exquisite lie yesterday. 
I , did not tell it selfishly, however ; I told 
it for a wise purpose, and it inured to the 
benefit of the truth." How many of you 
would admire me for owning that I had 
told a permissible lie ? — Morning Sermon, 
June 26, 1859. 



1 



LIKE to see a hard-working, honest 
man, especially if he has had some 



Fat 



dirty calling — a butcher, a tallow chandler, to the 

J *-* very 

or a dealer in fish oil ; I like to see such a marrow 
man, when by dint of honest industry he 
gets rich, build him a house in the best 
neighborhood in the place, and build it 
107 



177 Pulpit Pungencies 179 

so that everybody says, " O, what a fine 
house ; it is better taste than we expected." 
That does me good ; makes me fat to the 
very marrow. — Evening Sermon, May 8, 

1859. 



G 



OD has made this world as a splendid 
chariot, that His children may ride 

Best of all, . r^* , , L , 

Father as princes. Ihe horses serve tnem, the 

and mother . 

. ride chariot serves them, and the driver serves 

with them 

them ; and, best of all, father and mother 
ride with them to take care of them. — 
Morning Serrnon, April 10, 1859. 

WHILE men stood out of his path, 
and turned to look back admiringly 
Fat-soul after him, and to say to the stranger newly 

the 

topmost come to town, " Knowest thou who that is ? 

man 

That is the great and wealthy Mr. Fat- 
soul" — amid all these congratulations, and 
admirations, and human praises, there were 
others looking at him, and expressing 
opinions about him not quite so compli- 
mentary. For God and holy angels looked 
down upon his gross abundance, upon his 
108 



179 Pulpit Pungencies 180 

fat and dozing ease, and upon his arrogant 
self-gratulations ; and God calmly said to 
this man, who stood so large, who was so 
prospered, and who, very likely, was the 
topmost man of the whole circle in which 
he moved, " Thou fool, this night thy soul 
shall be required of thee." — Evening Ser- 
mon, yanuary 15, i860. 



1 



F a man, while out on a pleasure drive, 
takes a road that leads him through 



low grounds, which are beautiful, to be s tu P °d ' 
sure, but which consist of forests and mo- 
rasses filled with gadflies and mosquitos, 
that sting him and vex him almost beyond 
endurance, you say, " He won't go that road 
again." No, he won't, bodily. But a man 
may go down into life, and may drive 
through a morass of trouble, where gad- 
flies and mosquitos of vexation come about 
him, and sting him, and torment him ; and 
won't he go that way again ? The old, 
stupid fellow will whip his horse right down 
that same road the very next day. — Mom- 
ing Sermon, July 29, 1859. 
109 



181 Pulpit Pungencies 182 

HE opened his mouth, and taught 
them, saying, Blessed are" — oh, 
afraid who ? — " the poor in spirit : theirs is the 

to say t 

their soul kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that 
mourn : they shall be comforted. Blessed 
are the meek" — what! those spiritless fel- 
lows, with white faces, that go about afraid 
to say their soul is their own ? — Morning 
Sermon, February 19, i860. 



IS 

their own 



I 



T was not God's plan that the ark 
should be the refuge of the human race 
FemaJ 17 longer than until the deluge had passed 
away ; but if Noah and his descendants 
had afterward built arks upon the hills and 
rocks, and attempted to crowd all the 
people and animals on the earth into them, 
their folly would not have been greater 
than is that of those who are attempting to 
crowd back the gathering forces of the 
nations into institutions, which were only 
designed to give them a temporary ferriage 
while the deluge of an immoral common 
sense should last. — Thanksgiving Sermon, 
November 2 4, 1859. 

no 



183 Pulpit Pungencies 183 



H 



OW many men are there of whom 
we hear those profoundest philoso- 



The 



phers of human nature in these modern lobby 
times, legislators of the lobby, say : Gratitude 

" Can A be had ? " Fetch him 

"Easily, easily. One hundred and fifty 
or two hundred dollars will do for him." 

" Can B be had?" 

" I think he can. He don't want money, 
but he has got a son, or a son-in-law, who 
wants office ; and I think that by a little 
dexterous movement he can be secured." 

"Can C be had?" 

" C is a more difficult man to deal with ; 
but I think that if a man goes to him, and 
tells him he shan't go the way you wish 
him to, his conscience may be pushed 
through his obstinacy." 

"Can D be had?" 

" Yes ; I think there will be no trouble 
with D. He don't think about these things. 
All you have to do is to see that you send 
the right man to him." 

"Can E be had?" 

" E is a difficult case ; but I think I 
in 



183 Pulpit Pungencies 184 

know how you can get him. Find a man 
who is his friend, and let that man go and 
lobby make the request on the ground of friend- 
Gratitude ship. Or let Judge Reed, to whom he is 
Fetch him under great obligations, go to him, and 
gratitude will fetch him. He w 7 on't con- 
sent under any other conditions." 

" Can F be had." 

" Yes, F can be had ; but he requires to 
be in a royal mood when he is approached 
on the subject. He should be taken at the 
supper, when everything is genial, and he 
is at the height of his good nature. He 
cannot refuse then ; and when he says he 
will go, he will go." 

Thus, when the devil fishes, he prepares 
his bait according to what he is going to 
catch. — Morning Sermon, January 23, 
1859. 

THE stomach of a gluttonous man may 
be likened to the old witches' caul- 

spntes 

fo/S dron of which we read, which had ingre- 
dients from the lower regions fermenting in 
it, and around which the witches danced, 
112 



184 Ptclpit Ptmgencies 186 

having infernal sprites to fiddle for them. — 
Horning Sermon > July 24, 1859. 



T 



HERE was a man, in the town where 
I was born, who used to steal all his 



fire-wood. He would get up on cold nights, Fire-wood 
and go and take it from his neighbors' 
wood piles. A computation was made, and 
it was ascertained that he spent more time, 
and worked harder, to get his fuel, than he 
would have been obliged to if he had earned 
it in an honest way, and at ordinary wages. 
And this thief was a type of thousands of 
men who work a great deal harder to please 
the devil than they would have to work to 
please God. — Morning Sermon, December 
iS, 1859. 

YOU shall hear it said of an emotive 
man who preaches to his congrega- 
tion in the lecture room, " That man is a F ^ & 
revivalist. He is, no doubt, a popular preaching 
preacher ; but then, he don't understand 
anything deep or profound. He's got no 
theology." It is as if a man were to start 
113 



1 86 Pulpit Pungencies 187 

in January, with a four-horse cart, and go 
lumbering along the road on a fishing ex- 
Fl and g ' cursion. The stream is frozen over. He 
preaching takes his line, and throws it out about once 
in a mile, with a dead bait, upon the frozen 
river, and, after waiting a suitable time, 
draws it back again. When he arrives at 
the end of the brook, he turns his horses 
round and goes home. And he is called a 
great fisher, although he never brought a 
fish home in all his life. Another man, who 
has no fishing apparatus, gets an old alder 
bush for a pole, an old twine siring for a 
line, a common hook, and a grasshopper for 
a bait, and goes out ; and there is not a fish 
that don't know him. He has not been 
gone half an hour before his basket is full, 
and he returns well laden with fish. But 
the people say, " He's got no science. He 
catches fish, and that's all he does do." — 
Morning Sermon, January 30, 1859. 



The Flap (^\ H, commend me to that man who 

of whose 1 I 

tongue v^ carries his dagger in his hand, and 
not in his mouth ! Commend me to that 
114 



i8 7 



Pulpit Pungencies 



189 



man who only dips his dagger in poison 
which the apothecary can make, and who 
does not dip it in the infernal, rancorous 
poison which Satan brews ! There are 
men that we have seen, the flap of whose 
tongue, not in a single instance merely, but 
in scores of instances, makes the difference 
between heaven on earth and hell on earth ! 
— Evening Sermon, January 29, i860. 



THERE is nothing of which we have 
so much in these days as we have of 
patriotism ! Men are patriots so long as 
there is anything to be made by being pa- 
triotic ; so long as their country's fleece is 
w T ithin reach of their clipping. — Evening 
Sermon, November 27, 1859. 



Their ~ 

country's 
Fleece 



QALUTE Urbane, our helper in Christ, and 
O Stachys my beloved. Salute Appelles, 
approved in Christ. Salute them which are of 
Aristobulus's household. Salute Herodion. my 
kinsman. Greet them that be of the household of 
Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphe- 
na, and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. Salute 
the beloved Persis, which labored much in the 
Lord. Salute Rums, chosen in the Lord, and his 
mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus. Phlegon, 
Hermas, Patrobas, Hermes, and the brethren which 

115 



Well, 

who were 

all these 

Folks? 



189 Pulpit Pungencies 

are with them. Salute Philologus and Julia, Ne- 
reus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints 
Well, that are with them." 



who were 

all these 

Folks? 



Well, who were all these folks ? That is 
the beginning of them and the end of them, 
so far as we know. You may look through 
the dictionary, and you will find this simple 
history of their life, that they are men- 
tioned in the sixteenth chapter of Romans. 
Now, the reading of a catalogue of such 
names as these which I have read to you, 
is apt to excite a smile ; not when one 
reads them quietly to himself; but the 
children always laugh when they hear them 
read, and especially when the minister gets 
up and reads them before the congregation. 
The uncouthness of them to our ears, and 
so long a list of them, with no more mean- 
ing attached to them than is attached to a 
mere bill of items, may excite a smile, an 
innocent, harmless smile ; and yet, I pre- 
sume I have read them a thousand times 
in my life ; and I feel as though I could 
read this sixteenth chapter of Romans 
about as heartily as any chapter in the 
116 



189 Pulpit Pungencies 192 

Bible. — Wednesday Evening Lecture, No- 
vember 16, 1859. 



F Solomon had been half as wise as it 
is pretended he was, he would have 



T 

known better than to have started on such errand 
a fool's errand as that. — Morning Sermon. 
March 11, 1850. 



IT matters not if men roll my name about 
in slanderous reports, as a boy would ^ukuJii 
roll a foot-ball down a dirty street, so long Football 
as the cause of God succeeds. — Morning 
Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



NOT until men are made acquainted 
with the powers of their minds, will 
they be qualified to examine their motives phr ^ logy 
with profit. And this can never be, so long Foot ~ room 
as men accept only such systems of mental 
philosophy as that of Locke, and Reid, and 
Stewart, and the whole metaphysical school. 
117 



192 Pulpit Pungencies 193 

Phrenology, though I regard it as being in 
an unformed state, crude, only approxima- 
te™^ ^^ ^ ^ science, at least affords a founda- 

Foot-room . . _ 

tion upon which a man can put his loot, 
and wait for the waters of ignorance to 
subside. On this the dove can sit till the 
dry land of enlightenment appears. But 
the other systems do not afford foot-room 
for either man or bird. — Evening Sermon, 
November 6 -, 1859. 

NEITHER does this promise say that 
if a man shuts himself off from the 
see n world, and prays, and sings, and reads good 
Forepart books, and neglects his worldly business, 
store g oc i w in make up to him all that he loses 
by such negle6l. When a man opens a 
store on Broadway, God does not say to 
him, " Now, you have rented your building, 
and purchased your goods, and hired your 
clerks ; and if you will go back into your 
counting-room, and spend your time in 
reading, and singing and praying, I will see 
to the fore part of the store." — Morning 
Sermon, ynne 12, 1859. 
118 



194 Pulpit Pungencies 196 

THIRST find out what God has meant 
-* you to be — and if you cannot find it Friends 
out yourself, your friends can very quick — 
and then enter that department of life for 
which you were intended. — Morning Ser- 
mon, June 5, 1859. 

THERE is no man built large enough 
for imitation. The disciples of Ti- 
tian, of Raphael, of Michael Angelo, of the him with 

abundant 

Caracci, very soon ran out into mediocrity, littleness 
There never has arisen a great man in 
literature, in the State, in the arts, whose 
imitators did not very soon fringe him with 
abundant littleness. — Morning Sermon, May 
22, 1859. 

ALL through the conference meeting, 
those who speak are talking about 
how depraved they are in general, but never d o™°the 
in particular. They do not recognize any 
application of practical ethics to commerce, 
any application of practical ethics to poli- 
tics, or any application of praftical ethics 
to social life. The man who has come in 
119 



Fur 



196 Pulpit Pungencies 197 

to listen looks at one and another, and says, 
" I know that that man has been bathed in 
do^he illicit pleasures ; that man did a thing at 
the late caucus that I would have burned 
my hand off sooner than I would have 
done, sinner as I am ; and that man would 
not have done one bit worse than I saw 
him do if he had broken open a bank ; 
and yet they come here, and pretend to 
confess their sins, and they do not seem to 
consider that these things are sinful. And 
such men are looked upon by the Church as 
Christians. If they are Christians, I would 
not give much for Christianity. But I will 
try them once more ; I will go and listen to 
what they call Christian preaching." So 
he attends church ; but throughout his dis- 
course the minister never says anything 
but " pussy, pussy." He is all, the while 
smoothing down the fur. — Morning Scr?non, 
March 27, 1859. 



NO man has truly repented, and be- 
come a true Christian, except he 
has that within him which makes him a 
120 



ig7 Pulpit Pungencies 198 

well-wisher to every human being. It is 
the love of God that is implanted in his 
soul. If a man gets up and repents, and 
then goes home furiously devotional, but 
yet utterly selfish, he has not repented at 
all. — Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



H 



OW hard was it at first to bring the 
soil to such a state that you dared 



to think " plow ! " And how hard is it for hisfost 

r , , . , r . , Furrows 

a man, at first, to bring himself into such of grace 
a state that he dares to think " prayer ! " 
How, when the plow was first put into the 
ground, it bounded out, striking stones, and 
throwing itself hither and thither, and the 
holder with it ! And how, when a man 
cuts his first furrows of grace, he is slung 
about at the tail of the plow, hither and 
thither, and made to be a great deal more 
nimble than he wishes to be ! Yet, after 
ten years have passed, look upon that same 
operation in the field. Now, as the man 
plows, he whistles, and sings, and watches 
the birds, and only now and then takes 
account of the furrow. The ox scarcely 
121 



198 Pulpit Pungencies 201 

sweats. The turf goes over as if it loved 
to be turned, and the plow tucks it down as 
a mother tucks a coverlet round her child. 
Now it is very easy. Yes, it is very easy ; 
but it had to learn to be easy ! So it is 
with spiritual plowing. — Evening Sermon, 
October 16, 1859. 



I DO not like to see wrinkles. I think 
they are the devil's furrows on the 
brow, unless age has placed them there. — 
Morning Sermon, August 14, 1859. 



IN respect to the playing of cards, I do 
not think it is in all cases harmful. 
I can conceive of persons being in circum- 

great deal of , . _ _ . . 

Gambling stances where it would not harm them. As 
for myself, I have not learned to tell one card 
from another, although I have seen a great 
deal of gambling on the Western rivers. — 
Evening Sermon, November 20, 1859. 



I have seen 



God [ T would seem extravagant to say that 

never shoots 

unless -L me n love misery ; that they are ad- 
there is J J 

good Game dift ec i to tormenting themselves ; that they 

122 



201 Pulpit Pungencies 203 

love vexations to such a degree that it is 
needful that there should be set up the 
Divine command, " Fret not thyself in any- 
wise." But there is the command, and it 
is aimed at something ; for God never 
shoots unless there is good game. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, July 24, 1859. 

IT is a solemn thing to enter into wed- 
lock ; it is a solemn thing to open a 
gate through which shall troop myriads of 
little ones to the eternal world. — Evening 
Sermon, February 26, i860. 



1 



CAN'T bear to hear things that I do 
hear about my own people. I can't 



Gate 



bear to have persons come to me and say, Gave It to 
u Is it true that such a man belongs to your didn't he? 
congregation ?" and to hear them say, when 
I hesitatingly admit that he does, u We have 
heard such and such things about him." I 
have heard the same things before, but I 
have not wanted to believe them ; but when 
they come to me in this way, I can't help 
believing them, and I say to myself, " What 



He 
Gave it to 



203 Pulpit Pungencies 204 

shall I do ? " At first I think I will go to 
the man and talk with him ; but, after a 
little reflection, I say to myself, " If I do, he 
didnThe? will want to know who told me, and then, if 
I tell him, there will be a quarrel, and I 
shall be dragged into it as being a med- 
dler." So I conclude to hold back. Pretty 
soon I hear the same things from another 
source. After that I see the man, and I 
feel as though if he should open his vest I 
should see a great cancer. I sometimes lie 
awake and weep, thinking about him ; and 
I do a more foolish thing than that : I pray 
that I may preach thunder into his ears, 
and thus bring him to a realization of his 
true condition. And I do preach thunder 
to him ; and when I get through, he goes 
out and says, 4i He gave it to them, didn't 
he?" — Morning Sermon, March 27, 1859. 



THE more you make of the colored 
man, the more does slavery stink. 
I think a feeling against slavery has been 
driven into the hearts of this people, old 
and young, and into the hearts of Southern- 
124 



Here 

and 

Georgia 



204 Pulpit Pungencies 205 

ers even (for there are in this church more 
or less Southerners every Sunday, and I 
preach to more of them here than I should 
if I were in Georgia, and I think I preach 
to them longer than I should if I were 
there), by having it brought before their 
minds in this practical way. — Morning Ser- 
mon, July 17, 1859. 



V HERE is a kind of fundus which be- 



T " & 

-*- longs to every vegetable that grows ; 

God 

there is a kind of insect which belongs could not 

Get along 
without it 



to every vegetable tribe ; and there is a 
kind of sin which belongs to almost every 
circumstance. There is a sin which be- 
longs to public institutions. Men sit down 
and reason with themselves in this way : 
" The cause of God requires the existence 
and prosperity of this institution ; it is 
called of God to occupy such a field ; the 
cause of God is identified with it ; it is 
necessary to the cause of God ; the interests 
of the Redeemer are bound up with it ; the 
cause of the Church is bound up with it" 
They reason in this way till they begin 
125 



205 Pulpit Pungencies 208 

to feel as if God could not possibly get 
along without this institution. — Evening 
Sermon , May 15, 1859. 

THE mechanical element of prayer is 
one that sometimes introduces fri- 
to Get up gidity into it. A man that is very nerv- 

a prayer 

ous and restless, and that is pressed for 
time, says, " I am social in my nature ; and 
for me to withdraw from others, and go 
away into a chamber, and lock the door, 
and kneel down, and feel in a hurry, and 
not be able to get up a prayer, is disagree- 
able. — Wednesday Evening Lecture, Decem- 
ber 28, 1859. 



Heads higli 
a; a 
Gibbet 



MEN, you know, hold up their heads 
as high as a gibbet, when they are 
going to be humble. — Morning Sermon, 
May 22, 1859. 



I THINK that of all the trashy things 
in this world, the most trashy are a 
religion that don't do anything, and flowery 
sermons, and gingerbread books, that begin 
126 



2o8 Pnlpit Pungencies 210 

in the mouth and end in the ear, — Morning 
Sermon, yanuary 30, 1859. 



WHENEVER you see a man laugh, 
laugh with him ; whenever you 

see a man glad, you be glad, too. The be Glad, 



rocks could tell you that. If one of a joyous 
company, in some valley, beneath an over- 
hanging cliff, breaks out into a merry, ring- 
ing laugh, all the rocks laugh back again. — 
Morning Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



too 



H 



OW many men that you might sele<5i 
from amon2f a thousand of the most 



honest of your presidents, and cashiers, m go 



and direftors, and bankers, and brokers, do 
you suppose, have such an inherent love of 
good because it is good, of right because 
it is right, that you would put this million 
of dollars into their hands, and say, " You 
can put it all in your pocket, or give it to 
those who really ought to have it ! " How 
many men of those that are approximately 
honest would it be safe to trust in a case 
like this ? How many men would make a 
127 



for justice 



210 Pulpit Ptmgencies 212 

bargain with their conscience, and say, " Til 
go for justice ; I'll give them three quarters 
and pay myself one quarter. — Morning Ser- 
mon, y unitary 23, 1859. 



A 1 



ND then, right after that, he says, 
"Bear ye one another's burdens;" 
gi^e°them as much as to say, you are to take care of 
°" y all men that have fallen, that have sinned. 
If they have lied, and are convi6led of it, 
you are not on that account to give them 
the go-by ; if they have stolen, and are con- 
vi<5ted of it, you are not on that account to 
give them the go-by. — Evening Sermon t 
June 26, 1859. 



1 



T is not when men say, " God damn 
you ! " it is not when men use profani- 
ty™ ?' a,mn ties ; though they are not less wicked than 
you think they are, and though they are di- 
re6l affronts toward the majesty of Heaven : 
it is not when men do this that God is most 
offended. — Momi?ig Sermon, yune 19, 1859. 
128 



213 Pulpit Pungencies 215 

PEOPLE sometimes think that God can 
not get along without certain men ; ^lmGod 
and if they should die, they wonder what 
God would do. — Evening Sermon, May 15, 

1859. 



would do 



B 



UT let a minister, for nineteen sermons 
out of twenty, preach of abstract 



Neither he 

doctrines, that neither he nor God knows nor God 



anything about, because they are not true, 
and the people would say, " Here is a man 
who knows how 7 to lay down good, solid 
doctrines. He is a great preacher." — 
Morning Sermon, April 25, 1859. 



C^ OD teaches us to be pitiful, to be 
^ gentle, to be condescending, to bow 
down and bring our greatness toward the 
earth, toward those that need it. That is 
the way in which God teaches us that man- 
hood grows ; and Godhood grows in the 
same direction. — Evening Sermon, Septem- 
ber 18, 1859. 

129 



knows 



God-hood 
grows 



God-light 

is 
healthy 



216 Pulpit Pungencies 217 

WHEN a man fixes up his religion, 
and says, " I have got it so that 
man's independence is secured," it is as if a 
man should build a house, and fit it all up 
like a fashionable parlor, with windows, 
having inside blinds and outside blinds, 
roll-down curtains and roll-up curtains, so 
that ten suns, trying ten years, could not 
get in. I think the thought of our de- 
pendence upon God ought to make our 
hearts bound with gladness. This is one 
of the sweetest and most attractive things 
set forth in the Bible ; and as every phy- 
sician will tell you that sun-light is healthy, 
so I tell you that God-light is healthy, and 
that the soul is made stronger, every way, 
by the direft shining of the spirit of the 
ever-loving, ever-living God upon it. — 
Morning Sermon, J 'unitary 23, 1859. 



Take hold 

of 
God's hand 



I 



F when I rise in the morning I enthrone 

conscience and love, and take hold of 

God's hand by my thought, determined not 

to let it go, through all the hours of the 

day, and feel a willingness to bear all such 

130 



217 Pulpit Pungencies 219 

things as God's providence may put upon 
me, I can go forth to the discharge of 
manly duties with a smile which all the 
twelve hours shall not wipe from my face. 
— Morning Sermon, yuly 24, 1859. 



1 



N the beginning of the world men formed 
gods and godlings by the ten thousand. on a g nd 

~ , , , . . short Gods 

bnakes, monkeys, and calves were gods ; 
vegetables were gods ; old sticks of timber 
were sawed up into long gods and short 
gods. — Morning Sermon, February 27, 1859. 

A MAN has fifty thousand dollars to in- 
vest. Where does he invest it ? 
Does he take up land or stocks in a village p i a Jwhere 
that never hears the church bell ring ? Go£ e up 
No ; he says, " If I should go to such a 
place, my property would never increase ; 
it would never pay any dividend ; it would 
be a dead weight on my hands." A man 
wishes to invest his money where there are 
the most active men, and where there is 
the most moral influence. The place where 
there is the most true Christianity, is the 
131 



219 Pulpit Pungencies 222 

place where property goes up. — Evening 
Sermon, February 10, i860. 

GOOD nature is not to be an occasional 
thins:, which a man summons once 

occasional ° 

in a while, as he does his doctor or his 
attorney. — Morning Sermon, February 5, 
i860. 



WHEN a man has sown Canada thistle- 
seed, it is too late for him to pro- 
test against what he has done. They must 
come up. He may eradicate them, but he 
has got to work for it if he does. — Evening 
Sermon, March 4, i860. 



work for it 



Parasites 



I RECOLLECT the time when I used 
to be told that heaven would be an 
everlasting Sabbath ; and if I had not been 
quent n tnings more afraid of hell than I was of heaven, 
the throne I should have wished not to go to heaven. 
It was only second in rank among the 
places where I did not want to be ; for 
the idea of being compelled to recite the 
catechism, upon penalty and forfeiture ; of 
132 



222 Pulpit Pungencies 224 

sitting still in a universal singing-school ; 
of not being allowed to speak or laugh till 
the sun went down : such ideas as these 
led me to look with terror, almost, upon 
anything like an endless Sabbath of praise. 
The idea that I pictured of heaven is no 
more agreeable now than when I was young. 
But I have put away childish things. We 
are not to praise God as if we were so 
many parasites, so many courtiers, whose 
interest and duty it was to say grandilo- 
quent things around the throne. — Morning 
Sermon, November 6, 1859. 

TO the man who says, " God is such a 
great Being that He does not care ^L* 
for us poor mortals," I say, " You are such fot)1 
a great fool that you do not know what 
God is, even!" — Morning Sermon, August 
14, 1859. 

LET a colored man do the work that 
Horace Greeley has done ; let a Greeky 
colored man become such a physician as 
Dr. Mott is ; let a colored man preach as 
133 



224 Pulpit Pungencies 226 

Whitfield preached, and as Frederick Doug- 
lass is preaching, and what will be the re- 
sult ? In the presence of such a man, you 
will find that your prejudices go as the 
snows do in March and April. You can- 
not help it. Superiority in the top of the 
head will make its way everywhere. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, July 17, 1859. 

THE world is a grindstone, and races are 
axes which are to get their cutting 
The world Q ^ es ^y b e } n g ground on it! The very 
"God object for which God thinks it worth w r hile 
to turn and roll this round globe, is that by 
its very attrition and working men may be 
made men in every sense of the term. — 
Morning Sermon, March 11, i860. 



turns 



S' 



k UPPOSE a boy about six years of age 

were to come to you and say, " Father, 

you'll know what shall I do when I go to get married? 

act What shall I say ? How shall I arrange 

matters?" You look upon the child as a 

curiosity, and you say, " My dear boy, you 

are only six years old, and I guess you will 

134 



226 Ptclpil Pungencies 229 

get wisdom enough by the time you are 
twenty-five, or twenty-one, to know how to 
aft in such a case. — Morning Sermon, April 
24, 1859. 



D 



O not make your sins like an Egyp- 
tian mummy, with its dried bones 



and muscles wrapped up in gummed hide- in Gummed 

. hideousness 

ousness. Let your past sins be buried, and 
if you want to go to the graveyard once in 
a while to see where you have laid them, 
go, but don't bring anything home with 
you. — Morning Sermon, April 3, 1859. 



H 



OW many men that have been bored 



for forty-pound cannons, have been in°the 

., , . , 1 7i/r • r- Gun-range 

spoiled in the gun-range ! — Morning Ser- 
mon, ywie S, 1859. 



B 



E careful of doing wrong to your em- 
ployers, and be just as firm never 



to do any wrong for them as you are never totE 1 

, ' __ Handle 

to do any wrong against them. No matter 

if they wish a whip-lash, and wish to strike 

it out, never let them tie you to the handle, 

135 



229 Pulpit Pungencies 232 

and strike out with you into iniquitous 
things. — Evening Sermon, May 8, 1859. 

WHEN in our carriage we find men 
doing things that offend our deep- 

Don'tlet r . 

your anger est sense of honor, in its very core and 

Hang on 

centre, God says: "Give it the bolt — 
blast it ; but don't let your anger hang 
on. Don't let it be dripping, dripping, 
dripping all day long." — Morning Sermon, 
May 15, 1859. 



Hangers-on r \ ^HEY join themselves to that great 

play J fe 

andSeS horde of men who are the hangers- 

b [°° d on of society, men who play musquito, 
a lving and steal blood for a living. — Evening Ser- 
mon, February 5, i860. 



The 

arnessi 
man 



IT is a glorious thing to the carnal na- 
ture to get out of the harness. But 
blessed is that man who is harnessed, who 
has got a load behind him, and who has to 
pull to move it, at least up hill. — Morning 
Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



136 



2 33 Pulpit Pungencies 235 



1 



T is a cruel kindness to leave a child's 
disposition unsubdued. One who has 



disposition 



never learned how to obey, will be at fault a t°he mg 

all his life long. It is a vital attainment. 

Flax is no better than any weed, unless it 

be broken, hatcheled. Then it may be spun 

and woven ; then it may be manufactured 

and worn. — Evening Sermon, February 26, 

i860. 



1 



NEVER like to see a man walk among 
his inferiors, stiff, and cold, and hard, and 

gloved 



hatted and gloved. — Evening Sermon, May 
1, 1859. 



w 



E do not know precisely what our 
being will be in the future, though 



You 



there 



we know in general. I know in general Have me 

what the Aurora Borealis is. If you press 

the question as to what it is, I say, " It is 

a bank of tremulous, up-mounting light, at 

the north." If you ask, " What is it made 

of? " you have me there. — Morning Sermon, 

April 24, 1859. 



137 



236 Pttlpit Pungencies 237 



1 



LAUGH when I read the old leg- 
ends of St. Francis, and various other 
and saints of various names, who, after they 

the devil 

had violated every conceivable canon of 
health, for the sake of sanctity, were at 
last, as it was supposed, tempted of the 
devil in this way, and that way, and the 
other way. When they had violated bone, 
and muscle, and nerve, and brain, and 
body, they thought the fantasies, which 
were the natural results of such violations 
of natural laws, to be the devil ; and I 
don't wonder. — Morning Sermon, Septem- 
ber 18, 1859. 



1 



HAVE seen a great many happy 
men — thanks to healthy blood ; 
b1ood iy thanks to comfortable situations in life ! 
Christianity — but I have seen a hundred men happy 
on account of natural conditions of pros- 
perity, where I have seen one who could 
bear witness, " I am happy as a Chris- 
tian." — Morning Sermon, September 1 8, 

1859. 

138 



■ o 



8 Pulpit Pungencies 240 



T 



HE only way in which we can get per- 
mission to indulge in equivocations, 



and evasions, and deceptions, which we re- S 



fuse to baptize lies, as they ought to be 
baptized, is by running our moral character 
down at the heel. — Morning Sermon, June 
26, 1859. 



Heel 



A 



XD many more go on gathering dark- 
ness at every step, their feet tread- 



ing more and more slippery and rough curtain fails, 

-. . an d — 

3. till their character is sfone. Their Heii knows 

& the rest 

reputation soon follows ; with trustworthi- 
ness all trust ceases ; life becomes a system 
of dodging expedients ; vice becomes crime, 
and crime becomes destruction ; and before 
half their days are ended, the terrible drama 
is enacted and the curtain falls, and — Hell 
knows the rest. — Evening Sermon, March 
4, i860. 



p 



OOR thing ! she is dealing with a de- 

D ! Spare her ? Save her ? The thank God 

the. 

polished scoundrel betrayed her to abandon Hdii 
and walks the street to boast his hell- 
139 



240 Ptilpit Pungencies 241 

ish deed ! It becomes him as a reputation ! 
Surely, society will crush him. They will 
thank God smite the wolf, and seek out the bleeding 
Hein lamb. Oh, my soul ! believe it not ! What 
sight is that ? The drooping vi<5tim is worse 
used than the infernal destroyer ! He is 
fondled, courted, passed from honor to hon- 
or ! and she is crushed and mangled under 
the infuriate tramp of public indignation ! 
On her mangled corpse they stand to put 
the laurels on her murderers brow ! When 
I see such things as these, I thank God 
that there is a judgment, and that there 
is a hell! — Evening Sermon, February 12, 
i860. 

SUPPOSE my heart swelled with a de- 
sire to enlist in the cause of human 

A roistering, ... x ^, . . , , r 

swearing liberty. I say, Oh ! that the days of ter- 
ror were come again, that I might conse- 
crate myself, my energies, my zeal, my 
life even, to the bringing about of the reign 
of liberty. How I long to see re-ena6led, 
and to participate in the scenes of Lafay- 
ette ! " At length I hear that there is an 
140 



Hellian 



Hellian 



241 Ptrfpit Pungencies 241 

army of emancipation going down to Cen- 
tral America, to secure liberty to the op- 
pressed in that region. "Thank heaven," swearing 2, 
I say, " that an opportunity is afforded me 
at last ; and God shall see how I will fight 
for the liberty of those poor creatures." So 
I go to the place where the army is located, 
for the purpose of enlisting in it. When I 
get there I say to myself, " Before I put my 
name down, I will get a little acquainted 
with my fellow-soldiers." I go into a tent, 
and the first man I encounter is drunk. I 
say to myself, " That man has worked him- 
self in here, in some way, but he don't be- 
long here, of course." I then inquire for 
the officer, and am directed to a certain 
tent. I go there, and find several men 
gambling, and swearing, and quarreling, 
and I say to myself, " I'm in the wrong 
tent ; surely, these can't be the officers." 
Then I inquire for the Commander-in-chief 
himself, and on going where he is, I find 
him to be a man who epitomizes all the 
penitentiaries of the nation, a man on 
whom vices roost as birds on trees. The 
141 



241 Pulpit Pungencies 242 

next man I meet is a roistering, swearing 
hellian ; and it seems as though the streams 

A roistering, 

swearing of time had run past and deposited all its 

Hellian * x 

mud. One of the miserable wretches cries 
out, " We'll give 'em liberty." What he 
means is that they will make slaves of 
the whole population. " We'll give 'em lib- 
erty ;" that is, take possession of their farms, 
steal their money, upset their churches, 
trample under foot their laws, and bring 
them all into captivity. Such is the army 
of emancipation. If I was an honest man, 
do you suppose I would ever go in and sign 
my name as a member of it ? If I did, 
might paralysis take possession of my arm, 
and shrink it from finger to shoulder. — 
Morning Sermon, March 20, 1859. 

IT does not take a great while to read 
a book through if a man keeps at it. 
advertise The history of the institutions of the coun- 

in the 

Herald try, its laws and polity ; the history of the 

principal nations of the world ; the history 

of the globe, its geography and natural 

productions, and some knowledge of the 

142 



242 Pulpit Pungencies 244 

arts, may be had by any and by every man. 
There is no excuse if you do not know 
these things. You need not go to college 
to know them. The books are published — 
somebody has srot them. You need not 
advertise in the Herald asking for the man 
who will lend you an Encyclopaedia. — Even- 
ing Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



E 



VERY mechanic should make him- 
self a respectable mathematician, 



and if he does not, after five or ten spring 

Here 

years of labor, become a better workman 
with the aid of books, it is a sign the 
man is below par. He may be a clever 
fellow, but he certainly lacks spring here 
{tapping the head]. — Evening Sermon, May 
8, 1859. 

^y OW suppose in response to the trum- 
* pet of enlistment of a church, I go 
down to the camp for the purpose of join- "msoio 

from Here 

mg its army, and on making inquiry as to to heaven 
the character of the men of which it is 
composed, I should find that one is a usu- 
143 



244 Pulpit Pungencies 245 

rer, that another is engaged in an illicit 

business, that another is a man of pas- 

in solo s sions, the most violent and wicked, and that 

from Here 

to heaven others are vain, and proud, and selfish, 
and worldly : suppose I should find that 
this church was composed of such men 
as these ; that its members were just as 
bad as other men ; that the only difference 
between those in it and those without its 
pale, was that the wickedness of those in 
it was defended by a good name, do you 
suppose I would join it ? I would walk in 
a wilderness, and sing psalms in solo from 
here to heaven, before I would join such 
a church. — Morning Sermon, March 27, 

1859. 



One likes 
stimulants 



NOW there are thousands that derive 
intellectual pleasure from preaching. 

and another . r . 

Here They like to hear the souna 01 the music, 
which shows that the parade is coming. 
By and by, in comes the preacher, and he 
develops his soldiers' ideas to their great 
admiration, and parades them through a 
long sermon. When he is done, the peo- 
144 



245 Pulpit Pungencies 245 

pie, as they go out, say, " Splendid parade, 
wasn't it ? Fine ideas — fine ideas ! Very 
well put." To whom were they put ? stimulants 
There wasn't a musket that had a ball or and another 

Here 

any powder in it. Not a man dreamed of 
hitting anybody. It was a sham ; all a 
sham. There was no fight. The sermon 
was all a mere exhibition of ideas, a mere 
marching of ideas. These men that love 
mere intellectual enjoyment, like to have a 
minister that excites their thoughts. They 
say, " I don't want to go to church where it 
is a good deal easier to sleep than to listen. 
I like a man that has got some life in him, 
and that stirs one up." To what ? To go 
and pay that debt ? " Not exaftly ; I like, 
after having heard a sermon, to know more 
than I did before. I have no objeftion to 
being made better ; but I like the glow and 
enjoyment of a right good sermon" — as 
another man likes a stiff glass. He likes 
stimulants. One likes stimulants there 
[in the head], and the other here [in the 
stomach]. — Morning Sermon, January 30, 

i8 59 . 

145 



246 Pulpit Pungencies 249 

ET me say, then, to the young of my 

going to 6 -* — 4 charge, you never can have too high 

be Heroic an ideal as respefts the Christian duty and 

Christian virtue of truth. If you are going 

to sin be heroic, and sin on the side of 

truth. — Morning Sermon y June 26, 1859. 



1 



,F all hideous things mummies are the 
Hideous V_/ mos t hideous ; and of mummies, 
those are the most hideous that are run- 
ning about the streets and talking ! — Morn- 
ing Sermon, March 11, i860. 



ONE man ridicules his next-door neigh- 
bor on account of his pride ; but he 
so High wou ^ not h ave known anything about that 
neighbor's pride if he had not carried his 
own head so high that he could look over 
the fence and see how proud he was. — 
Morning Sermon, June 12, 1859. 

" T^ISTRIBUTING to the necessity 

lt ^bl ot *~^ of saints ; given to hospitality." 

High times y^. g j ast j g a c j um p f blossoms which 

signifies, in the first place, what you have 
146 



249 Pulpit Pungencies 250 

just done in your contribution for the aid 
of a sister church ; and in the second place, 
what you are going to do in the entertain- 
ment of strangers during the coming An- 
niversaries. It makes you smile, I see. It 
has got to be high times, when everybody 
laughs if a text is brought home in such a 
way that it really does seem to mean some- 
thing. You have had the Gospel preached 
as though there were nothing in it so long, 
that when it is preached so that it appears 
to have a practical application to every-day 
life, people smile at the very fatness of it. — 
Morning Sermon , May 8, 1859. 



T 



HERE is a vague impression in the 
minds of men who long for property, 



that it may reward some rare stroke of skill, i n Vh<Tnick 
that it may turn up at one single more 
spadeful, just as deluded treasure-seekers, 
digging at midnight under a glimmering 
lantern, expect that each next spade-thrust 
will strike upon an iron chest or crash into 
an earthen pot full of coin. These men 
think there is such a thing as dexterity of 
147 



Hitch ! 



250 Pulpit Pungencies 251 

management, by which wealth may be sud- 
denly obtained, and they think that a hit in 
the nick of time will bring down a whole 
shower-bath of gold. — Evening Sermon, 
February 5, i860. 

THERE is no institution evangelical or 
theological ; there is not even a be- 
they must nevolent institution, nay, not even the Tra<5t 
Society, which some men think indispen- 
sable to Heaven itself, that I think God 
could not get along better without than 
with, if you consider the way in which they 
have been conducted. Yet men begin by 
reasoning in this way : " This institution 
has the cause of God at heart ; the cause 
of the Redeemer is bound up in it ; the 
salvation of poor, perishing, immortal souls, 
is bound up in this institution. So men 
say, Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! such an institution 
must not be disturbed ; this institution 
must be sustained. And when, in the 
providence of God, it is brought to circum- 
stances where men can not sustain it ex- 
cept by a little hitch in their morality, why, 
148 



251 Pulpit Pungencies 253 

they must hitch ! — Evening Sermon, May 
15, 1859. 



F 



REE colored people exist in every 
State in our Union, and are greatly 



Laws like 

increasing — particularly in those States in Hoes 
which laws are passed forbidding them to 
go there ; for laws are like hoes that cut off 
the tops of weeds, making each root send 
out forty new shoots ! — Morning Sermon, 
July 17, 1859. 



A 



ND that which is true of gambling, is 
true of tampering with illicit pleas- 



is 



ures, with this exception : that gambling thy servant 
works with slowness, while licentiousness 
works like a conflagration. The spark 
rarely smolders long. When a man has 
caught the infeftion, it is as if he were set 
on fire of hell. And do you suppose that 
in the beginning he proposed that to him- 
self? If it had been hinted to him, he 
would have said, " Is thy servant a dog — a 
149 



253 Pulpit Pungencies 256 

hog ! — that he would do this ? " And yet 
he does it. — Evening Sermon, March 4, 
i860. 

I BELIEVE there are whispers of God 
to the soul. I do not think the Holy 
Ghost is paraded in the Bible merely to 
make up the number three in the God- 
head. — Morning Sermon, November 6 } 1859. 



No. 3 



1 



F men have been bitten by this infernal 
infidelity, if they have come to enter- 
so busy, tain this false idea, that God is so busy 

like a boy 

driving' taking care of this world, like a boy driving 

a Hoop & _ 

a hoop through the street, who expects 
everybody to get out of his way : if men 
have come to suppose that God is thus 
busy, so that he cannot take care of the 
human beings he has created, let them get 
out of it as soon as possible. — Morning 
Sermon, April 10, 1859. 



THIXK the largest buildings in this 

j\ ot vet 



I 



Hopped out X world; probably> that bold anything, 
are the Egyptian pyramids, which hold a 
150 



An 

insurrection 

in a 



256 Pulpit Pungencies 258 

little king's dust. Next to them, I suppose, 
some of the largest houses are those which 
hold the dust of rich men who have not 
yet hopped out of them. — Morning Sermon, 
May 8, 1859. 

A GREAT many people undertake to 
throw away the Bible because they 
cannot stand its revelations and truths. It 
is as if a man on shipboard, with a terrible Hospital 
fever breaking out among his men, should 
throw his medicine chest into the sea, 
without throwing the fever into the sea 
with it ! What if an insurrection should 
take place in a hospital, and the patients 
should turn all the physicians and nurses 
out, and bar the doors against them ? — 
Evening Sermon, October 23, 1859. 

I THINK life is like a voyage. Suppose 
there should start out from your har- A o To _ 

J every man 

bor a yacht, a schooner, a sloop, a hermaph- Xa j^ 
rodite brig, a full-rigged brig, a barque, 
a ship and a man-of-war, all bound on one 
common voyage ; now then, suppose the 



258 Pulpit Pungencies 260 

yacht should look at the man-of-war as she 
moved down the bay, with all her canvas 
overman out, and say, " When can I get such sails 
Hull upon me like that man-of-war ? " which has 
three great noble masts on it. Any man 
would see that the yacht has no place for 
such sails. No ; everything must make the 
voyage with its own hull and with its own 
sails. Now, God has given to every man 
his own hull, in which to make the voyage 
of life. — Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 

AND who does not know that around 
every church there are just such 
hyenas whose heads are like to become a 
fountain of tears at the transgressions of 
reputable Christians ? — Evening Sermon, 
February 12, i860. 

I REMEMBER a poor colored man who, 
when I w r as a boy twelve years old, 
made a deeper impression on my mind of 
sermon-fed the goodness of God, than all the sermons 

child & t 

to which I had ever listened ; and if there 

was ever a sermon-fed child, I was one. 

152 



260 Pulpit Pungencies 261 

Nothing took so firm a hold upon my 
higher nature as did the influence of that 
consistent, praying, psalm-singing, rejoic- 
ing colored man, who taught me to work 
on the farm, and to know that there was 
something in religion. — Morning Sermon, 
August 14, 1859. 



1 



BELIEVE in the dodlrine of divine 
decrees ; but I do not believe it is a 



pair of steeds which a child can drive ; and do not 
if you harness them, and undertake to drive such 

doctrines 

them, you will find yourself drawn so swiftly 5^°* for 

1 J J J daily use 

through the heavens that you will be glad 
to alight from your chariot. The do6lrine 
of divine sovereignty, free agency, the na- 
ture of temptation, the cause of evil : these, 
and many others, are founded substantially 
in truth ; that is, truth belongs to each of 
them ; but not truth which you can so un- 
derstand and employ as to make it profit- 
able in daily life. From the time I was ten 
years old till after I was thirteen years old, 
the doctrine of God's foreknowledge was a 
perpetual torment to me. I reasoned in 
153 



26 1 Pulpit Pungencies 262 

this way : " If God knew everything from 

the beginning, he must have known when 

donor I would be born, what my nature would be, 

suppose 

such what circumstances would surround me, 

doctrines 

dSyVs? aR d wnat things I w r ould do ; and if what 
I shall do is fixed and settled, it is no use 
for me to try to do one way or another." 
This doctrine acred as a paralysis on my 
efforts toward right conduct. So long as I 
was under its influence, I had a very low 
experience — and I suppose that what was 
true of me, in this respect, is usually true 
of others ; for I do not suppose that such 
doctrines are meant for daily use. — Even- 
ing Sermon, November 6, 1859. 

I WAS a child of teaching and prayer ; 
I was reared in the household of faith ; 
I knew the Catechism as it was taught ; I 

He did not . . " . 

doit was instructed in the bcnptures as they 

out of r J 

^cLrisf were expounded from the pulpit, and read 
by men ; and yet, till after I was twenty- 
one years old, I groped without the knowl- 
edge of God in Christ Jesus. I know not 
what the tablets of eternity have written 
154 



262 Pulpit Pungencies 262 

down, but I think that when I stand in 
Zion and before God, the brightest thing 
which I shall look back upon will be that 

He did not 

blessed morning of May, when it pleased doit 
God to reveal to my wandering soul the ^chris?* 
idea that it was his nature to love a man in 
his sins for the sake of helping him out of 
them ; that he did not do it out of compli- 
ment to Christ, or to a law, or a plan of 
salvation, but from the fullness of his great 
heart ; that he was a Being not made mad 
by sin, but sorry ; that he was not furious 
with wrath toward the sinner, but pitied 
him — in short, that he felt toward me as 
my mother felt toward me, to whose eyes 
my wrong doing brought tears, who never 
pressed me so close to her as when I had 
done wrong, and who would fain, with her 
yearning love, lift me out of trouble. And 
when I found that Jesus Christ had such a 
disposition, and that when his disciples did 
wrong, he drew them closer to him than he 
did before — that when pride, and jealousy, 
and rivalry, and all vulgar and worldly feel- 
ings rankled in their bosoms, he opened 

ir'C 

*55 



262 Pulpit Pungencies 263 

his heart to them as a medicine to heal 
these infirmities ; when I found that it was 
Christ's nature to lift men out of weakness 

He did not 

cm^f to st:ren gth, out of impurity to goodness, 
^Christ 1 * ou t °f everything low and debasing to su- 
periority, I felt that I had found a God. I 
shall never forget the feelings with which 
I walked forth that May morning. The 
golden pavements will never feel to my feet 
as then the grass felt to them. — Morning 
Sermon, October 2 , 1859. 

I GO back, now, to my own ministry. I 
have got to begin to talk about myself 
as an old man, before long. I have been, 

19 of them 

were women, thus far, talking as though I were young ; 
other was b ut j fi nc j {hat I am remembering back too 

nothing o 

far for that, when I go back to the time 
when I first became the pastor of a church. 
It was twenty years ago. I remember that 
the flock which I first gathered in the 
wilderness consisted of twenty persons. 
Nineteen of them were women, and the 
other was nothing. — Wednesday Evening 
Lecture, November 16, 1859. 

i 5 6 " 



The 
chool- 
ma'am 



264 Pulpit Pungencies 264 

I VERY well remember going back, 
after having arrived at years of man- 
hood, to the school-house where I did not 
receive my early education. I measured sch ,° o1 
the stones which, in my childhood, it 
seemed that a giant could not lift, and I 
could almost turn them over with my foot ! 
I measured the trees which seemed to loom 
up to the sky, wondrously large, but they 
had shrunk, grown shorter, and outspread 
narrower. I looked into the old school- 
house, and how small the whittled benches 
and the dilapidated tables were, compared 
with my boyhood impression of them ! I 
looked over the meadows across which my 
little toddling feet had passed. They had 
once seemed to me to be broad fields, but 
now but narrow ribbons, lying between the 
house and the water. I marveled at the 
apparent change which had taken place in 
these things, and thought what a child I 
must have been when they seemed to me 
to be things of great importance. The 
school-ma'am — oh ! what a being I thought 
she was ! and the school-master — how awe- 
157 



I 

The 
school- 
ma'am^ 



264 Pulpit Pungencies 266 

stricken I was in his presence ! So look- 
ing and wistfully remembering, I said to 
myself, "Well, one bubble has broken." 
But when you shall stand above, and look 
back with celestial and clarified vision upon 
this world — this rickety old school-house 
earth — it will seem smaller to you than to 
me that old village school. — Morning Ser- 
mo7ty November 6, 1859. 



T 



y O those, therefore, who have no sort 

of objection to the profound sleep 

0rt an°d dox °^ ^ e san( ^ uar y> I must stand as an enig- 

h s e ieeping X ma - As f° r me > * have no sympathy with 

sleeping in the san6luary, whether it be 

orthodox sleeping or heterodox sleeping. — 

Evening Sermon, January 8, i860. 



BUT I must desist. The clock gets 
through before I do every Sunday. 
I would that it were slower ; for though I 
often begin sorrowfully and heavily, the 
time for me to stop never arrives that I do 

158 



1 



266 Pulpit Pungencies 268 

not feel that I would fain continue till the 
going down of the sun. — Morning Sermon, 
September 18, 1859. 



1 



F at any time I have seemed to you or 
to others to run with undue severity 



upon men, or churches, or orders of men. try to pray 

that down 

or institutions, it has never been from any 
personal bitterness. I do not think I feel 
personal bitterness toward any man. Xor 
do I ever feel angry, except when I see one 
man injuring another. I confess that some- 
times, when I see a strong man taking ad- 
vantage of a weaker one, I do feel an in- 
dignation which has a little rancor in it ; 
but I try to pray that down. — Evening Ser- 
mon, y aniiary 8, i860. 



1 



HAVE sometimes practiced rifle shoot- 
ing, not at men, but at targets and l 



trees — a very innocent recreation; and I wouldn't go 
have noticed one thing in connection with as it would 

for other 

it, and that was, that the pleasure derived P e °P le 
from it was oftentimes very nearly out- 
weighed by the vexation caused by poor 
159 



268 Pulpit Pungencies 270 

shooting. When the mark seemed within 
easy reach, and others firing at it centred 
it at almost every shot, I fired out of range 

Bullet . J & 

wouldn't go i n a hundred ways. I fired wide, first on 

for me J 

^othe^ this s ide, then on that, then under and then 
people Qver . anc j p ra( c|-j ce did not seem to make 

the matter much better. My eyes were 
too big, my hand was all tremulous, and 
the bullet wouldn't go for me as it would 
for other people. — Evening Sermon, Novem- 
ber 2, 1859. 

I NEVER get drunk myself; but when 
a man who is addicted to drunkenness 

never 

§ m^eif k rings at my door, and comes in, and says to 
me, " For God's sake, if there is any feel- 
ing in your heart for a poor creature, will 
you not pity me and help to save me ? " it 
is not merely pity that fills my soul, but I 
ask myself, "Why did that man come to 
me?" — Morning Sermon, October 23, 1859. 



1 \T OW you cannot say that I have 
collection 1 1 preached this sermon as a leader. 

to make 

I have got no collection to make, no money 
160 



270 Pulpit Pungencies 272 

to raise. I have preached it because you 
needed to hear it. — Evening Sermon, Jan- 
uary 15, i860. 



I WAS going to speak of swearing 
among women. The only reason why 
I will not is that I do not wish the young 

Swearing 

people to know that such a thinsr ever took ^ mon s 

x x o women 



women 



place. I have written something upon this 
subject, which I shall withhold, but I will 
show it to those who wish to see it, if they 
will call upon me. — Evening Sermon, May 
1, "1859. 



ICEBERGS do not know that they are 
being melted at the top and at the 

Icebergs 

bottom ; but they are when the summer and a 

churches 

takes hold of them, and the Gulf Stream 
flows beneath them. Churches that think 
they are not changed, are not as thick of 
ice at the top or the bottom as they used 
to be, but there is yet ice at the heart. — 
Morning Sermon, March 27, 1859. 
161 



273 Pulpit Pungencies 274 



S ( 



OME men are, of nature, or of long 
experience, a second nature, exces- 
watch him" sively cautious. To aft without calcula- 
tion they never can. Nor can they believe 
that others do. Therefore, a mistake of 
mere heedlessness in a neighbor is a de- 
sign, a deceit ; he meant something ; some- 
thing more than lies on the face of it. 
" I'll watch him ; I'll suspect him ; Til find 
him out ; he shan't circumvent me ! " — 
Evening Sermon, February 12, i860. 



I SAY that we are bringing our children 
up vulgarly, and infidelly, when we 
teach them to associate God with the Bible, 
with churches, and with other things that 
are counted sacred in the world, and do 
not teach them to associate Him with the 
works of nature. I think it is much easier 
to think of the rugged mountain, the bril- 
liant stars, and the effulgent sun, as speak- 
ing of God, than to think of dumb churches 
as speaking of Him. — Morning Sermon, yuly 
10, 1859. 

162 



Infidelly 



275 Pulpit Pungencies 276 



A 



XD so as playing for nothing is a very 
insipid process, men soon get to 



playing, not for money, but for the drink, to have the 

J J devil 

for some little token, for nuts, for the sup- In ^^ te 
per, or something of the sort. They play 
for small amounts, just enough to keep 
their hand nerved, just enough to keep 
an object before their mind, just enough 
to have the devil inoculate them with a 
passion for gambling ; and the moment 
they have once got the virus in them, 
then it is no longer at their option how 
far they shall go. Suppose a man should 
go to his physician, and say to him : " Be 
kind enough to inoculate me with the small- 
pox, so that I shall have the small-pox a 
littl Suppose a man should ask to be 

inoculated with the plague, so that he 
might have just a taste of the plague. — 
Evening Sermon, March 4, i860. 

I LOOK at the life and disposition of 
these men who cry for the lullaby of Sunday 
love in the family, in the store, in all de- Ias ^ nce 
partments of their life, and I find that they 
163 



276 Pulpit Pungencies 277 

abhor love except on Sunday when I preach 

on that doctrine of God's moral govern- 

u th e ay ment. But if I were to go to them at their 

Insurance 

day places of business, and say, " I understand 
that you take advantage of the circum- 
stances of your workmen, and employ them 
at one-quarter of what they ought to have, 
so that they can scarcely subsist on what 
you pay them : and as you wanted me to 
preach about love, I thought I would come 
and tell you what the do6lrine of love is 
as applied to matters of this kind," they 
would say, " Religion is religion, and busi- 
ness is business. Go home, and when I 
want you to come to my shop and preach 
to me, I will let you know." In other 
words, they want sermon love, poetic love, 
theoretic love, love that makes them feel 
good during the insurance day ; for Sun- 
day is the insurance day of the week ! — 
Morning Sermon, February 5, i860. 

investments ."XT I NE hundred and ninety-nine men 
lower way 1 ^1 in a thousand, and oftentimes one 

of living 

more, have such investments in the lower 
164 



277 Pulpit Pungencies 279 

way of living that they feel not only re- 
buked but angry, when by a higher view 
you humble their attainments and stain 
their conceit of excellence. — Morning Ser- 
mon, November 17, 1859. 



M 



EN may talk as much as they please 
against the Calvinists, and Puritans, 



and Presbyterians ; but you will find that e f r ctnne 

, . , Investments 

when they want to make an investment they 
have no objection to Calvinism, or Puritan- 
ism, or Presbyterianism. They know that 
where these systems prevail, where the doc- 
trine of man's obligation to God and men is 
taught and practiced, there their capital may 
be safely invested. — Eve7iing Sermon, Feb- 
ruary 10, i860. 



MEN whose life is yet hot with indig- 
nation at the oppression which they 
suffered in their own land, when they come 
to America are marked, above all others, 
for arrogance and cruelty to those that are 
put under them. There is not another 
nation in this world that has said so much, 

165 



The Irish 



279 Pulpit Pungencies 281 

and said it so eloquently, against dynastic 
oppressions, as the Irish, and if there is a 
nation that is meaner than any other in 
their treatment of their inferiors, it is the 
Irish. It is their shame. I am sorry that 
it is so, for the Irish have too many noble 
traits to be disfigured by this hateful one. — 
Morning Sermon , July 17, 1859. 



1 



F, when you are sent on little mean- 
nesses, you trot quickly, men will 

Has got J / 

. it mark you, and say, " He is fit for it." But 

in him J J 

if when men attempt to put upon you this 
miserable business, and find you stiff in 
opposition, they will mark you then also, 
and say, "Is that pretence, or is it real?" 
and then they will try you again in two or 
three ways ; and by and by they will begin 
to say, " I don't know but the boy has got 
it in him ; I have heard about a conscience." 
— Evening Sermon, May 18, 1859. 



Sold "XT AY, all this is nothing. There are 
under -1 ^1 men who carry on a trade in litera- 

the skirts 

ture and of art which must make Belial 
1 66 



engravers 



281 Pulpit Ptmgenctes 281 

blush. Books that poison the imagination jackal 
and unsettle the moral principles of men 
are multitudinous, and forever multiplying ; 
subterranean libraries hawked in secret, sold 
from under the skirts, clandestinely read ; 
books that, like vermin, hide from sight by 
day, in cracks and crevices, and creep out 
in darkness and at night to suck the very 
blood of virtue. And this is a business ; 
to write them, to print them, to bind them, 
to sell them and to hawk and dispense them. 
There are whole classes of men, and of 
women — God have mercy on the world ! — 
who live by it, who have their ambitions 
in it, and who stand, by the relative de- 
grees of corruption, higher or lower than 
each other. The whole scale of virtue 
is turned bottom side up, and the things 
that are down on the scale of God, are 
up on the scale of wicked men. They 
glory in their shame ! Nay, pictures even 
worse than these abound. No tongue 
could speak their abominations. Human 
language has not formed any words that 
can follow the palette of the painters of 
167 



28 1 Pulpit Pungencies 282 

jackal the school of Belial, or the burins of 

engravers 

their jackal engravers. And thousands 
are engaged in this systematic corrup- 
tion, and take delight in their work. 
There are exporters, and importers, and 
wholesale dealers, and retail dealers, and 
colporteurs, diffusing them everywhere. 
And God permits all this organized cor- 
ruption to exist. I will not trace it 
further, although I have not exhausted, 
by a great way, this terrible witch-cal- 
dron of earth and time. — Evening Ser- 
mon, October 23, 1859. 



A 



MAN may be a millionaire, and yet 
be so miserable as to groan all day 
but? 2 and curse all night. A man may have all 

Jack-knife 

the outside things which the world affords, 
and yet not be a happy man. One man 
may have a chest full of excellent tools, 
and be a bungling workman ; while another 
man may have nothing but a jack-knife, and 
be a skillful workman. — Evening Sermon, 
February 10, i860. 

168 



283 Pulpit Pungencies 285 



H 



AD we judged the case without the Jacob, 

i • • • n r^ anc * not 

enlightening influence of God s Esau 
word, we should have said that Jacob was 
the wicked man, and not Esau. — Evening 
Sermon, January 29, i860. 

BUILD yourselves up first, and then 
your property. There are many men In th jau own 
who build up their fortune first, and build 
themselves in it, so that when the roof is 
on they are in their own jail, and cannot 
get out. — Evening Sermon, February 5, 



1 



F a man asks, " Do you suppose that a 
virgin can be a mother?" my reply 
is this : The New Testament tells us that aside 

the ordinary 

the Savior was conceived of the Holy Janitor 
Ghost and born of a woman. The event 
was so far removed from the ordinary pro- 
cesses of natural law, that I have no diffi- 
culty in believing that it occurred as it is 
described, by the? power of God. Shall I 
believe that He who ordained, from the 
beginning of the world, that we should 
169 



285 Pulpit Pungencies 285 

spring into life from the life and body of 

another, could not control that wonderful 

askL arrangement, so that His Son should be 

the ordinary 

janitor born oi a woman r 1 he marvel to me is, 
that men are ever born of man and woman 
at all ; that God ordained such a gate from 
the other life into this. I can never enough 
wonder at that profound and sacred mys- 
tery where two lives, quickened into union 
by the rapture of unspeakable love, flash 
forth the spark of another being. It seems 
to me, in view of the perpetuated marvel of 
the beginnings of human life, a very little 
thing to suppose that God could make a 
special use* of these powers. And when 
the myriad wombs that, since the dawn of 
time, have issued the human race, have re- 
ceived the power to do it from the living re- 
membrance and inspiration of God's mind, 
shall I stagger to believe that in a single 
instance he could control that organization 
to his own divine and beneficent purposes ? 
May not He who created the very door of 
human life push aside the ordinary janitor, 
and, with his own hands, unlatch its por- 
170 



2S5 Pulpit Pungencies 288 

tals, and let his Son come through ? — Even- 
ing Sermon, October 2, 1859. 



H 



OW many men have been ruined by 
self-examination ! And yet, tracts 



and books are published, and sermons are invented 



preached, and exhortations are made, with- 
out number, urging men to self-examina- 
tion, as if fantasy must run into folly. Men 
are set to write journals. I know who in- 
vented that trick. The devil invented it ! 
It is a device of his to tempt men. — Even- 
Sermon, November 6, 1859. 



Journals 



W 



HEX a man has certain traits which 
constitute -the leading features of 



intellect 



his character, we call those traits his dispo- inS 
sition. Thus, there are some men that live 
in their thoughts. They are dry everywhere 
except in their intellect ; but there they are 
juicy. — Morning Sermon, August 7, 1859. 



1 



THIXK that many persons are like jj^jg^d 

up 
mess ! 



many houses which we see. If you 
o into the front hall, you find it very 
171 



288 Pulpit Pungencies 289 

nice ; if you go into the show-parlor, you 
find everything in order there ; and if 
jumbled you go into the sitting-room, you find 
mess ! nothing out of the way there, But if, 
unluckily, you open a cupboard door, what 
a jumbled up mess do you behold ! Many 
people have, in their Christian charafter, 
a nice front hall, a fine parlor, and a clean 
sitting-room. — Evening Sermon, Jantiary 
22, i< 



Jury 



SUPPOSE a man, in a moment of anger, 
were to give two hundred thousand 
dollars to a religious society — I won't call 
angels, any names — leaving his wife and children 

and an 

im w ial destitute ; suppose that wife were to notify 
the managers of the society of the facts of 
the case, explaining to them that her hus- 
band wrote two wills, and that through 
inadvertence, as she believed, he had signed 
the wrong one ; and suppose, notwithstand- 
ing these circumstances, these managers 
were to claim that God had put this money 
into their hands, to be expended for re- 
ligious purposes, and that therefore it was 
172 



289 Pulpit Pungencies 291 

their duty to retain it, do you believe, that 
though all the angels in heaven should tes- 
tify that these men were guided in their 
course by Christian principles, an impartial 
jury could be found who would believe it ? 
— Morning Sermon, March 21, 1859. 

IN teaching your children, you have to 
invent little parables, simple stories ; 
you have to go into their play-houses, and gSi^ 
make use of the things you find there, 
likening them to the things you wish to 
teach. You have to do just what God did 
in the formation of the Book of Revelation. 
You are obliged to imagine conditions in 
the sphere of the child's playthings, his 
cakes, his tops, his books, his carriages, his 
knife, or his other trinkets, that shall inter- 
pret to him, by his own knowledge, the 
things you wish to instil into his mind. — 
Morning Sermon, April 24, 1859. 



T 



HE moment that a man loses his in- . ^ ick , 

back, and 

dependence, so that before he utters 



him 

a truth he must be sure that it will not 
173 



291 Pulpit Pungencies 292 

kick back and hurt him, he is gone. — 
Morning Sermon , May 22, 1859. 



1 



Kicks 

you 

into the 



AM frequently visited by persons whose 
consciences are troubled with cases of 
this kind ; perhaps they come to me say- 
bosom ing : " I am an only son and my mother is 

of God's b J J 

Providence a w idow ; I have just got into a large estab- 
lishment where my employer tells me I 
must take cognizance of such and such 
things, which my conscience tells me are 
wrong. He says : ' I must do it or quit/ 
Now, sir, what shall I do ? Shall I sacri- 
fice all my prospects in life and give up my 
situation ; or will not the Lord wink at it, 
since it is my employer's business, and I 
am working under duress ? " If I under- 
stand the words of Jesus Christ, he says it 
is better to lose your life than to do wrong. 
Christ has said to you, Forfeit your right 
hand : but here, instead of that, it is only 
your place. Suppose the merchant kicks 
you out, where does he kick you to ? Into 
the bosom of God's providence ! You think 
of this man who promises to let you sleep 
174 



Kicks 



292 Pulpit Ptmgencies 293 

under the counter, to draw your $400 the 
first year, and $500 the next ; and you 
think it is worth while to look after him ; 

into the 

while He who sits on the throne of the 5^°» 

of God's 

universe, and promises you an eternity of Providence 
life, is not to be regarded ! No, I say ; go 
out of any establishment that insists on 
your being a wicked man, quicker than a 
shot ; go out of it and keep out of it ; un- 
less when you made the bargain and he 
bought your services, he bought yourself 
too. In that case I have nothing to say : 
I don't preach to slaves. — Evening Sermon, 
June 12, 1859. 



TI^HERE the Christian faith has 
* » been brought home to the un- 



l^L 



derstanding and conscience and affections 



J .t5 



Religion 

runs 

clear down 



of men, where it has entered into men's J?*}* 

7 Kitchen 

practical lives, there have been seen the 
best farms, the best ships, the best mines, 
the best manufactories, the best schools, 
the best books, the best clothes, the best 
food : for religion runs clear down to the 
175 



293 Pulpit Pungencies 295 

kitchen ! — Evening Sermon, February 10, 
i860. 



WHEN you come to the gate of 
heaven, you may be sure, if you 
Knock, knock, and say, "Lord, Lord, open unto 

you will 

not get in m e," that you will not get in. A man that 
is fit to go in, always goes up without 
dreaming that God will not let him in. 
He expefts to find the gate open. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, February 8, i860. 



it 



M 



OST men treat those mercies as I 
have seen persons treat flowers 
Know that I had given them. They took them 
with an indifferent "Thank you," but 
seemed to regard them as so many mere 
leaves, or as some miserable, worthless 
things, and presently commenced picking 
them to pieces ; and by the time they had 
taken twenty steps the walk was strewn 
with fragments of them, and I looked after 
them and said, " If you get another gift 
from me, you will know it." — Morning Ser- 
mon, Ju?ie 5, 1859. 

176 



296 



Pulp it P u ngencies 



297 



AXD that whole owl set of men, that 
raven, black-winged-prophet set, that 
sit on the dry branches of nature, and 
croak about this miserable world and this 
miserable life, belong outside of the line of 
Christianity. Xot only are they not dis- 
ciples of Christ, but they are not knowledge- 
able men even in the elements of Chris- 
tianity. — Morning Sermon, March 1 1, i860. 



Knowledge- 
able 
men 



THERE are men who think they un- 
derstand the system of the universe. 
They have got up early, and found out all 
about God. They will bring their book, 
and tell you exactly how he was made, 
what his decrees are, and what his pur- 
poses are ; and if you do not believe what 
they say, they will damn you — they will 
swing around the scythe of their zeal, and 
cut you in pieces. They know all about 
heaven and earth. They have their fences 
built and their lines drawn in regard to all 
these matters. They do not know so much 
about love — that is only a morality ; they 
do not know so much about patience — that, 
177 



A man 
who 

Knows 
more than 
God does 



A man 



297 Pulpit Ptingencies 298 

too, is a moral affair ; they do not know so 

much about gentleness — that belongs to 

~who" sentimental piety ; they do not know so 

Knows 

more than much about lon^-suffering — any moralist 

God does & t> J 

can tell you about that. But about the 
everlasting truths of this universe ; about 
truths that radiate from the heart of the 
universal God ; about the truths that end- 
less ages shall not reveal, and that we shall 
not be able to understand till we have out- 
grown these mortal parts and experiences ; 
about these, they are not only conceitedly 
positive, but despotic. Deliver me from a 
man who knows more than God does. — - 
Morning Sermon, April 24, 1859. 

THE experiences of love are such some- 
times, even in this life, as to be an 
testament earnest, a blessed interpretation, of some- 

in 

Labor thing more glorious yet to come. There is 
one thing which the New Testament is 
always in labor with, and which is never 
born, and that is the conception of the 
greatness of the love of Christ to our 
souls. — Morning Sermon, November 6, 1859. 

178 



material 



299 Pulftil Pungencies 300 

GOD has laid in material for this affec- 
tion abundantly ; and the mother 13 
not more admirably formed to nourish the Laidf* 
infant body by her own, than to nourish its 
heart by her heart. Its soul feeds at her 
heart, as much as its body at her bosom, 
and with this difference, that the child is 
never weaned from its soul-breast. — Even- 
ing Sermon, February 26, i860. 



1 



T has been supposed that all of God's 
likening himself to man in the Bible, 



Won't come 

is on account of our weakness ; and that together 



accordingly, it is to be interpreted as giving 
us some proximate idea of what God is, 
but not as giving us the real truth. Well, 
what's the use of proximate truth that is 
not a bit like the real truth, I should like to 
know ? If a man wishes to unite two ends 
of a rope, and they will come together 
within half an inch, but won't come any 
nearer, it would be no worse if they did not 
come within half a mile of each other. So 
long as they won't come together and lap, 
it makes no difference how much they lack 
179 



and Lap 



300 Pulpit Pungencies 302 

of meeting. — Morning Sermon, February 
27, 1859. 



A 



LL that religious indolence which we 
sometimes see in formal religious 

God's giorv .. . •ii ii 

and human men, and sometimes in churches, and that 

Laziness 

affefted fear of taking God's work out of 
his hands, is a delusion and a snare. I 
sympathize with those men who fear that 
the name of God may become unreverenced, 
and who desire to add to the declarative 
glory of God ; but not with those men who 
suppose that God's glory is augmented by 
human laziness under any pious name what- 
ever. — Morning Sermon, September '2$, 1859. 



A MAN is, as it were, a cask of wine. 



You are 



The figure would have been allow- 
*em P ty e able in the days of Christ, more allowable, 

because . . . 

you perhaps, than it is m our temperance days ! 
an over j± worm gnaws through a stave. It is a 
small worm, not half so large as a knitting- 
needle. The moment he comes to the wine 
he draws out his head — for worms are not 
as fond of wine as men are ! — and a drop 
180 



Leak 
all over 



302 Pulpit Pungencies 302 

follows him, only a drop. Another worm, 
on the other side of the cask, gnaws through 
another stave. He gets a drop, and draws empty 

because 

back. On each end there are a dozen or T >™ 
twenty other worms eating their way to 
the wine. Not one of them is as big as 
a mite ; but fifty or sixty of them together, 
if each makes a hole only large enough to 
allow a drop to pass through it, are suffi- 
cient to cause the w r aste of all the precious 
contents of the cask. After the lapse of a 
day, a week, a month, or six months, the 
vintner goes to see his treasure ; and be- 
hold, the cask sounds as empty as a hypo- 
crite's heart ! There is not a drop in it. 
And yet, it looks like a cask of wine. 
Where have the contents gone ? Not one 
pint has been surreptitiously drawn by the 
servant that gets blamed, or by the thief 
that the vintner accuses without knowing 
who he is. The wine has all leaked out 
at holes not large enough to admit of the 
discharge of more than one drop at a time. 
Xow, ten million little meannesses, ten mil- 
lion selfishnesses, ten million pettishnesses, 
181 



302 Pulpit Pungencies 304 

ten million waspish dispositions, pierce and 
puncture the heart, and all its graces are 
drawn out. You are empty because you 
leak all over ! — Morning Sermon y February 
5, i860. 



o 



H, thou honest legal thief! God 
writes thee down a fitter tenant 

Thou honest 

Legal of the jail than yonder culprit ! The un- 



thief! 



whipped crimes of men undetected, are 
often worse than the crimes that officers 
make known and punish. — Evening Ser- 
mon, February 12, i860. 

TRUTHS are to be measured by this 
test — can you reduce them to life 
main and practice ? A man may, by apparently 
logic the most sound process of reasoning, draw 
forth seemingly wonderful truths, and he 
may appear to demonstrate them clearly, 
while yet there is nothing of them. There 
has not been so much legerdemain in all 
the magicians from Pharaoh's day to our 
ow T n, as there is in logic. Logic is proved 
to be the only unlying thing we have, and 
182 



304 Pulpit Pungencies 305 

still, it lies like a witch, incessantly. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, yanuary 30, 1859. 



T 



HERE are some men who teach, and 
many who understand, that religion 



is a sudden, an instantaneous, distinctive ne% e n S d 
experience of moral power, a kind of health- fly 
ful, divine sun-stroke. They seem to have 
an idea respecting religion which I can 
liken to nothing except the imagination the 
ancients had respecting lightning, which 
represented Jupiter as having a store of 
bolts all about him, so that when he wished 
to strike anything, with power, he had but 
to select a bolt, and hurl it down upon the 
oak, the building, or the impious man, as 
the case might be. So these men seem to 
suppose that God has about him a store of 
bolts in the shape of blessings ; that when 
the proper time comes he puts his eye upon 
an ele6l soul, and takes one of these bolts, 
and lets it fly at that soul ; that the mo- 
ment the bolt has struck, the man is del- 
uged with religion ; and that from that in- 

133 



305 Pulpit Pungencies 307 

stant he is pervaded with the Holy Spirit. 
Morning Sermon, May 29, 1859. 



1 



F we have once come to the habit of 
feeling vigorous and intense disappro- 
badceT bation of things evil, we shall be in but 
little danger of being drawn astray by 
them. But no man can come into such 
a habit, who is limber-backed in his dis- 
likes. — Morning Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



THERE is a very limited hint in nature 
of the provisions of grace. There is 

A 

Limited a very iimited idea of atonement and of re- 
hint of 
grace generation in nature. A broken bone will 

grow together again. There is in nature, 
in certain stages, and up to certain points, 
a kind of provision for restoration from 
mischiefs ; but beyond that there is no 
provision at all. Let a man take a tea- 
spoonful of prussic acid, and then let him 
get back to his former state if he can. — 
Evening Sermon, October 23, 1859. 
184 



308 Pulpit Pungencies 309 

ALL around about you are men whom 
you despise and call shiftless — empty 
bags, who never will stand up although you mp y 
fill them ever so many times. Don t you bom Limpsy 
suppose it is a misfortune for a man to be 
born limpsy ; don't you suppose it is un- 
fortunate for a man to be so built that his 
thoughts cannot touch each other, and can- 
not form a concatenation ? Shiftlessness 
is one of the greatest misfortunes. — Even- 
ing Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



T 



HERE are many persons who seem 
to think that when a man becomes 



a Christian he is bound to quote pious texts lubndty 6 
continually ; but nothing can be more de- talk 
testable in the sight of God. Above all 
things avoid that loathsome lubricity of 
pious talk. When you hear men mouthing 
a great deal about religion, and talking a 
great deal about their motives, you may be 
sure that those men are wicked, or else 
appearances are very deceptive. — Evening 
Sermon, May 15, 1859. 

18s 



Locked 

himself 
out 



The 



It's his 

own 

Look-out 



310 Pulpit Pungencies 3x2 

THE two views are these : one says 
that God built the world as a house, 
and that he is master of the house ; and 
the other says that he built the world as a 
house, and then locked himself out, — Even- 
ing Sermon, September 18, 1859. 



1 



devil devil, and I think no man ever will. 



THINK no man ever cheated the 

he?Ied I have no doubt that the devil overreaches 
himself and cheats himself; but in any 
transaction between you and him, he is 
longer-headed than you are. — Evening Ser- 
mon, February 10, i860. 



YOU have no right to be unconcerned 
w T hether men aft rightly or wrongly 
— whether they are good or bad. That 
spirit which says, " I will take care of my 
own self, and let other men take care of 
themselves," is of the devil. The spirit of 
God is this : " Look not every man on his 
own things, but every man also on the 
things of another." That spirit which says 
of a man's conduct, " Oh, it's his own look- 
186 



3t2 Pulpit Pungencies 314 

out, not mine/' is unchristian. It is his 
own look-out ; but it is yours, too ! — Morn- 
ing Sermon, October 16, 1859. 

§ 

I THINK it is one of the hardest things 
& I Love 

in the world to say, I love you. I y° u 

don't know why. A man who could look 

a woman in the face and say, I love you, 

without shrinking, ought to shrink. Love 

is like the ringing of bells ; they sound 

sweetly while they are chiming ; but after 

all it is hard work to ring them. And I 

marvel at the deep, manly and tender love 

which Christ poured out upon his disciples. 

They found in him united both father and 

mother. — Morning Sermon, yamiary 2, 

1859. 

r I A \VO things make the one universal 
-*- law. Love and serve God, is the growing 

and 

one part : the other is, Love and serve Low-hoeing 
man ; and the latter is just as important 
for this world as the former is for the next 
world. As trees and crops run out upon 
soils that are deficient in the chemical in- 

187 



314 Pulpit Pungencies 315 

gredients required for their growth, so will 

any national growth be spongy and full of 

growing blights that does not draw up into itself 

and 

Low-hoeing the most religious regard for human rights, 
and the most sacred humanity toward the 
weak and helpless in human societies. It 
is taking care of the top that has made 
nations weak. We must take care of the 
root, and then the top will take care of 
itself. And it is this that we ought to 
learn from the New Testament, if any- 
thing : that the secret of high growing is 
low-hoeing, and that working at the root is 
the shortest road to the blossom. — Morning 
Sermon, July 17, 1859. 



IT is a bad thing for a man to think too 
much about himself, to talk too much 

things 

outward about himself, or to examine himself too 
much. The less he indulges in these things 
the better he is off. Let a man have a 
sense of duty, and take a right direction 
in life, and then sweep and lunge toward 
things outward as much as possible. — Even- 
ing Sermon, November 6, 1859. 
188 



J 



1 6 Pulpit Pungencies 317 



w 



HAT would you think of an earthly 
father who was so perfect that his 



He might 

children could not possibly have anything asweUbe 

1 J J & Maelzel's 

in common with him ; who was so perfect automaton 
that he was above their infantile sports ; 
who was too wise to talk of their infantile 
follies ; who felt too deeply to have sym- 
pathy with their little feelings ; and who 
had no connection with their incipient life, 
and rude, imperfect ways ? Would such a 
character be admirable in a father ? He 
might as well be carved out of marble ; or 
he might as well be Maelzel's automaton, 
and with turned crank, or wound-up spring, 
work out all the duties he owes to his 
family! — Evening- Sermon, September 18, 

i3 59 . 



G 



OD says, " Let parents train up their 
children." Infidel wisdom says, 



A town 

" Let the public train them up for them ; Magazine 

1 x ' of children 

let them be gathered in some common 
building ; let nurses be hired to impart 
nourishment to them ; let masters be sought 
to instruct them. What a thought — to 
189 



317 Pulpit Pungencies 318 

break up the nests of parental love ; to 
snatch from the mother her half-weaned 

A town n . 

Magazine child ; to bear this weeping wretch to the 



of children 



town magazine of children, to be rubbed, 
and washed, and fed, and whipped, at so 
much a head by cheap hirelings, to be 
loved by dollars and cents' worth, to be 
taught religion and virtue at so much 
apiece ! Every step of the plan is horribly 
unnatural. It begins by breaking up mar- 
riage, and turning men out as beasts roam, 
without mate. It proposes to colledt the 
offspring of this system with even less 
care than a farmer would gather his lambs 
or calves. — Evening Sermon, February 26, 
i860. 

WHEN the cradle of the young mother 
is first pressed by an infant child, 
a r Maniy and she bends over it not even trying to 
conceal her gladness, and the father, scarce- 
ly less pleased, at a few paces, praftices, as 
he thinks, a manly reserve, what thoughts 
flow through both their minds ! — Evening 
Sermon, February 26, i860. 
190 



Practices 
a Manl} 
reserve 



319 Pulpit Pungencies 319 

NOW we laugh — but we ought not to — 
at the poor Catholic who says his 

Maria a certain number of times a 'him* 01 

day, and has his string of beads, and runs out of a 

tumbler 

them over at each time, repeating a little 
prayer at every bead he touches ; but what 
shall we say of that headless kind of pray- 
ing which we so often hear in Orthodox 
prayer-meetings ! A man comes home at 
night from his store, where he has had 
twenty-five or thirty men on the jump all 
day, and says, "I've done a splendid busi- 
ness to-day. My sales have amounted to 
about twenty-five thousand dollars ;" as 
much as to say, " I'm the man ; I'm a 
merchant who understands how to carry on 
business as it should be carried on." He 
has just time to take his supper before it is 
time for meeting, and as soon as his meal 
is over he orders up bis team and goes to 
the lecture-room. He has but just taken 
his seat when the minister says to him, 
44 Brother, will you pray?" He is taken 
right in the point of unexpectation ; but up 
he rises, and says, " Lord, I am a great 
191 



319 Pulpit P tendencies 



320 



sinner/' Yes, he is ; he never would pray- 
under such circumstances unless he was. 
ip him The man has been so perverted by Chris- 

like Alarbies . . 

out of a tian shams; the man has run into these 

tumbler 

serried insincerities to such an extent and 
his throat is so lubricated by them, that 
these phrases slip out of him like marbles 
out of a tumbler. — Morning Sermon, April 
3, i8S7- 



As to 

that 

Matter, 

I might 



READING and writing are relative. 
The want of these things is dis- 
graceful ; but in and of themselves they 
are good for nothing. If they were good 
for anything in and of themselves, a man 
that could read and write a strange lan- 
guage would be as well off as a man that 
could read and write in his own tongue. 
If reading were good for anything in and 
of itself, I might as well read for you in 
Hebrew — and as to that matter, I might 
for a great many of you ! — Morning Ser- 
mon, March II, i860. 



192 



321 Pulpit Pungencies 323 



T 



HERE are many men so greedy that 
they feel what their neighbors make 



that they might have made is taken away thfif 6 
from them ; and that they have lost all that 
they do not get of what they meant to get. 
Their eyes grow large, their imagination 
becomes fevered, and they mean to rush 
over the course and scoop up wealth by 
the armful ; but they lose their judgment 
and accuracy before they know it, and . 
stumble, and measure their whole length 
in . the dust, on the ground. — Evening Ser- 
mon, February 5, i860. 



1 



THINK love grows between husband 
and wife by expression of affection. 



Husband 

I know there is a stately dignity in vogue, and wife 

Husband and wife sit over against each statues 

of Memnon 

other like those great statues of Memnon 
in Egypt ; then they are vast, stony, and 
hard. — Evening Sermon, May I, 1859. 



A 



RE there no savage beasts in the w The . 

Menagerie 

menagerie of your soul, which, if of s ^ ur 
they should break away from the restraints 
193 



323 Pulpit Pungencies 325 

that bind them, would pounce upon and 
lacerate whatever came in their way ? 
Menagerie Have you never experienced the feeling 
soul of hatred ? Have there never been lurid 
moments in which revenges sprang like 
fires of hell from your soul ? Have there 
never been moments when you thought 
you knew how sweet murder might be ? — 
Morning Sermon, January 1, i860. 



M 



ANY men treat God very much as 
we treat men with whom we do 
are es business. Many men seem to think that 

Merchandise . .... 

the mercies we continually enjoy are mer- 
chandise, and that God sits in heaven to 
dispense them ; and they go to him day 
after day and take them, without once feel- 
ing that they are absolute gifts for which 
they ought to be thankful. — Wednesday 
Evening Lecture, December 28, 1859. 



Nothing TT 7HEN the qualities which religion 

Me abk ant " ought to inspire are found in a 

man, that man's fortune is made ; that 

man is settled in life. Nothing is so mer- 

194 



Mind 

their 

own 

business 



325 Pulpit Pungencies 328 

chantable or desirable as those qualities. — 
Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 

AGES are like family groups : they had 
better mind their own business, and ^f^ r 
not mind that of others ; therefore it is an 
impertinence for one age to discuss those 
great principles which belong to another. — 
Evening Sermon, June 5, 1859. 

VANITY is that delusive, that inseft- 
iferous, that multiplied feeling, and 

"O, never 

men that fight vanities are like men that Mind" 
fight midges and butterflies. It is easier 
to chase them than to hit them. They 
come back like flies in summer, which, 
though smitten fifty times, say, " Oh, never 
mind ; I take no offense." — Morning Ser- 
mon, February 5, i860. 

BUT miracles are the midwivcs of young 
moral truths. They are necessary 
when these truths are children in men's 
understandings, but not when they have 
grown up. In the beginnings of the world, 
195 



are 
midwives 



328 P id pit Pungencies 330 

before the moral sense became developed, 
it was useful to act upon the moral sense 

Miracles through the instrumentality of miracles. 

Midlives g ut as men ' s moral sense grows, and be- 
comes capable of appreciating moral evi- 
dence, miracles cease ; as the nurse in the 
household is dispensed with when the child 
is grown so as to be able to take care 
of itself. — Morning Sermon, December 18, 

1859. 

SO it is among men. Their first efforts 
at goodness are very crooked and 
shallow, like a man's furrow in a newly 
plowed piece of ground : hit or miss, and 
oftener miss. — Evening Sermon, October 16, 

1859. 



H: 

and oftener 
Miss 



T 



HE life of some men is so much in 
the heart that if you were to cut off 

Wouldn't J 

Mis > their heads they wouldn't miss much ; and 

much J 

the life of others is so much in the head 
that you could almost take out their heart 
and they would'nt miss much. — Morning 
Sermon , yanuary 30, 1859. 
196 



33i Ptripit Pttngencies 333 



T 



HERE are to-day, sailing under the 
flag of pirates, men whose original ele- 



Missionary 

ments of disposition were as good as mine or pirates 
yours. There are plowing the deep, to-day, 
missionary pirates, who bring heathen from 
Africa that they may be converted, whose 
original dispositions were as good as that of 
any minister that preaches the Gospel to 
them! — Morning Sermon, January 1, i860. 



Selling 



I SAY that a person may so tell the 
truth as to tell a lie at the same time ; 
as when a man, offering to sell a mocking- 

Mocking- 

bird, and being asked whether it would bird 
sing, replied, " Oh ! it will delight thee to 
hear it sing/' on the strength of which re- 
ply it was purchased. There is no ques- 
tion but that the man who purchased it 
would have been exceedingly delighted to 
hear it sing, but he never did — Morning 
Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



T 



HERE is your charter ; and I want to a Moping 

Christian 

know what business any man has, 



under that charter, to be a moping, melan- 
197 



333 Pulpit Ptingencies 334 

choly, whining, complaining Christian ? — 
Evening Sermon, October 9, 1859. 



1 



WOULD give more for one poor 
woman, whose poverty makes her 
Rice laugh and sing ; who is contented with 
That would j ier humble lot ; who bears her burdens 

shut him ; 

up with cheerfulness ; who is patient when 
troubles come upon her ; who loves every 
one ; and who, with a kind and genial 
spirit, goes about doing good, than for all 
the dissertations on the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity that could be written, as a means of 
preventing infidelity. I have seen one such 
woman, who was worth more than the whole 
church to which she belonged, and the min- 
ister put together; and I was the minister, 
and my church was the church ! She lived 
over a cooper-shop. The floor of her apart- 
ment was so rude and open that you could 
sit there and see what the men were doing 
below. She had a sort of fiend for a hus- 
band, a rough, brutal shipmaster. She 
was universally called "Mother Rice." She 
literally night and day went about doing 
198 



334 Ptclpit Pungencies 335 

good. I do not suppose all the ministers 
in the town where she lived carried conso- 
lation to so many hearts as she did. If a Rice 
person was sick or dying, the people in the T s ^Vh°m d 
neighborhood did not think of sending for up 
any one else half so soon as for Mother 
Rice. I tell you, there was not much 
chance for an infidel to make headway 
there. If I wanted to convince a man of 
the reality of Christianity, I said nothing 
about historic evidence : I said, " Don't you 
believe Mother Rice is a Christian?" and 
that would shut him up ! — Morning Sermon^ 
August 7, 1859. 



w 



HEN Christ went anywhere, there 
were the old righteous Pharisees 



watching him and criticising what he did ; sneakSf 
when Christ went anywhere, there were 
the mousing, sneaking Pharisees seeing if 
they couldn't get something to publish in 
the papers ; when Christ went anywhere, 
there were the boastful Christians who had 
to tell how good they were, and what they 
had done ; when Christ went anywhere, all 
199 



335 Pulpit Pungencies 337 

the poor fallen creatures in the neighbor- 
hood remembered all the good they had 
learned, and, sobbing, said, u I know I am 
a sinner, and he knows it ; and if anybody 
will give me a chance, it is he. I will go 
to him." — Morning Sermon, January 23, 
1859. 



1 



N the collisions of men pushed on by 
pleasure, or ambition, or avarice, there 
tm the is a constant play and counter-play of petty 
is^ provocations, petty tales, mean deceptions, 
ungrateful supplantings, repaying fairness 
with foulness, honor with dishonesty. Now 
a noble mind rids himself of these wrongs 
as he does his garments of spattered mud. 
He lets them alone while fresh, since brush- 
ing would only spread them. He waits till 
they dry, and then cleanses himself of them 
all, and lets the dirt fall back to the dirt. — 
Evening Sermo?i, February 12, i860. 



Pre Hk e ling T ^ respect to a man's preaching the 

children 



T 

making X truth, I do not object to his preaching 
so that his sermon shall roll like a band of 



200 



$$j Pulpit Pungencies 338 

music, or so that his serried ranks of ideas 

shall march like lancers. The thing is that 

his preaching shall, with or without pleas- Eke 

. . . c 

ure, with or without elegance, build up jjjjjj* 

manhood, and make men doers of things 
that are right, and high, and noble. All 
other preaching is specious and contempt- 
ible. I can compare two-thirds of the 
preaching of the present day to nothing 
but children making sand houses and mud 
huts, who, after they have worked and 
scraped the dirt together, and got them 
formed, sweep them over with their hand, 
and go away. — Morning Sermon, January 
30, 1859. 



THERE are many men who coin every 
drop of manly blood in them to get 
money ; and when they have got it, they 
are miserable desiccated mummies, only 
needing the cerements on them to make 
them complete ! — Evening Sermon, Febru- 
ary 5, i860. 



Mummies 



201 



339 Pulpit Pungencies 340 



Mummy 



I 



F a man has come to that state in which 
he says, " I do not want to know any 
more, or do any more, or be any more," 
he is in a state in which he ought to be 
changed into a mummy ! — Morning Ser- 
mon, March 11, i860. 



T 



HE Bible is not, itself, and never w r as, 
meant to be an object of reverence, 

The Bible . r . ... _ _ . . , 

and as it it were an idol or a °;od. It is simply 

Murray's & * J 

Guide-Bcok a guide-book. Would you know whether 
it tells the truth ? Follow its directions 
and see ! What if a man should take Mur- 
ray's Guide-Book of Italy, and, on his way 
thither, should read accounts of all its mag- 
nificent structures — the temples, the mu- 
seums, the mausoleums, and of all the re- 
nowned statues and pictures which are 
stored in that great repository of ancient 
and modern art ; and what if, while sitting 
in his carriage reading, he should com- 
mence a criticism and judgment of the 
things described in the Guide-Book, before 
he had seen one of them ! He goes to no 
temple ; he visits no museum ; he beholds 
202 



34-0 Pulpit Pungencies 340 

no gallery ; he stands before none of those The BIble 



great pictures which Raphael, in his gentle miS^s 

t . o *, ■. -. -. Guide - Book 

inspiration, depicted ; he looks upon none 
of those sublime paintings which Michael 
Angelo left ; none of those which Leonardo 
da Vinci, or Correggio, or Titian, or Paul 
Veronese left ; none of all those many left 
by that band of noble men. And nobler 
men than these old painters, or men that 
spoke better truths, in spite of all their lies 
of superstition, never lived. He has no 
knowledge of all these things, except that 
which he gets from Murray's Guide-Book. 
He sees not pictures, but descriptions of 
pictures ; not statues, but accounts of sta- 
tues ; not temples, but a history of temples 
and porticos, and yet he pronounces sen- 
tence ; praises, condemns, admires, or re- 
jects without personal knowledge of any 
of all these things ! Foolish as this would 
be, it is wisdom itself, compared with the 
treatment given to the Bible. The truth 
of the Word of God is to be found outside 
of the Bible, not inside of it. — Evening 
Sermon ^ October 2, 1859. 
203 



34i Pulpit Pungencies 343 



M 



EN are not music-boxes, which, when 
wound up, carry their own players 
ha^ inside of them ; but they are harps, which 

not 

Music-boxes must be touched from without. Each man's 
heart, therefore, must be touched by other 
men. We are to touch other men's hearts. 
Other men's hearts are belfries, and there 
we must ring out all our chimes. — Morning 
Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



IT is a great thing to be able to sing 
while you work. God gives songs 
teacher in the night. God is the best music- 
teacher. — Morning Sermon, September 25, 

i8 59 . 



w 



E love to trace our ancestry to early 
houses and families in England. 

NakeSSs ^ e l° ve to trace ^ to Huguenot or Hebrew 
blood. Neither is this vain or foolish. It 
may become so through abuse, but it is not 
so of necessity. It is right. A man may 
take something from the loom of the past 
to cover the nakedness of the present with. 
Morning Sermon, March 4, i860. 
204 



No devil 



344 Pulpit Pungencies 345 

THE strongest evidence I can think of 
against there being a devil, is that 
there is no need of one. Men do works of 

Nambv- 

evil in such abundance that there would pamby 

talk 

seem to be nothing left for a devil to do ! 
These things have been permitted from the 
beginning of the world to our day, and by 
a Being who is said to be too good to let 
an evil spirit live ! But when I look at the 
facts, this namby-pamby talk about the im- 
possibility of God's creating a principle of 
evil, is simply contemptible to me. A man 
who has not nerve, and brawn, and bone 
enough to look at things as they are, and 
admit them, I do not know what business 
such a man has to live ! — Evening Sermon, 
October 23, 1859. 

SHARP men, like sharp needles, break 
easy if they do pierce quick. There 
is not a fallacy more universal than that "and 
which teaches that wickedness is the way 
of success in this world. I aver that God 
puts more temper in a man's soul than man 
ever put in or the Devil ever put in. I 
205 



345 Pulpit Pungencies 347 

should be ashamed to ask a man to be a 
Christian from motives drawn from the ex- 
chequer. — Evening Sermon, Jime 12, 1859. 



T 



O be in perfect health, one must be in 
such a condition that he does not 
throufh know that there is anything of him. Now 

a Nettle- 
hedge suppose a man is sound in every organ, but 

that in the morning he goes through a 
nettle-hedge, what effeft does it have upon 
him ? Why, although he is in good health, 
although his lungs are right, and his heart 
is right, and his nerves are right, and every 
other part of his body is right, yet, all day 
long he is chafed, and fretted, and irritated, 
just because in the morning he went through 
that nettle-hedge. Well, care is to the mind 
what nettles are to the body. — Morning Ser- 
mon, August 14, 1859. 



Troubled 



A MAN goes to his physician, and he 
says to him, " I have, sir, very great 
euragia su g- er i n g . j have very sharp pains that 
shoot through my left breast ; I have very 
acute pains in my spine ; and my head 
206 



347 Pulpit Pungencies 347 

seems to me to have abandoned all its Troubled 

with 

uses." The physician then begins to in- Neuralgia 
terrogate him, and says to him, " What has 
been your course of life?" The man is 
ashamed to tell ; so he says, " Well, sir, I 
have been exposed to dampness in various 
ways, and my impression is that I am 
troubled with neuralgia." The physician 
proceeds to prescribe for him, on the sup- 
position that his difficulty is neuralgia ; but 
as he gets no better, but a good deal worse, 
he says to himself, " I do not believe my 
physician understands my case. I do not 
believe the medicine he is giving me is 
going to do me any good." The reason 
why is, that he is such a fool as not to tell 
the truth, and I think there is no greater 
fool than a liar. At length he goes to 
another physician, and says, " Can you do 
me any good ? " This physician knows so 
much that he don't know anything ; and 
after putting a few pompous questions to 
the man, concerning his case, he says, 
" Yes, I can cure you ;" and accordingly 
gives him a few remedies. But they afford 
207 



347 Pulpit Pungencies 347 

Troubled him no relief. After a few weeks, he says 

with 

Neuralgia to himself, " I do not believe this physician 
understands my case, either ; and by-and- 
by, after suffering nights and suffering days, 
for a long time, and when his strength be- 
comes much reduced, and there is a pros- 
peel of a speedy termination of all his 
earthly hopes and expectations, he says to 
himself, " What a fool I am for lying, and 
hiding the real cause of my difficulty." He 
now goes to his physician again, and says, 
"Can you give me an interview?" The 
physician says he can. " Can you," says 
the man, " give me an interview so private 
that nobody will know that I have been 
near you ? " " Oh, yes," says the physician, 
" I can ; I have a place on purpose for such 
cases." So he goes with the physician, and 
hangs down his head — he ought to have 
hung it down before — and says, "This is 
my history;" and then he takes a walk 
through hell, and explains the cause of his 
disease, which he had so long been con- 
cealing. The physician says, " Why did 
you not tell me of this before ? Since you 
208 



347 Pulpit Pungencies 348 

have given this explanation, your difficulty 
is perfectly plain to me. It is very late, 
but I think I know now just where to put 
the javelin of remedy. Now I will under- 
take your case, and I think I can cure you." 
The man says, as he goes away, " I feel a 
great deal better now. The physician says 
he knows what ails me, and I may get well 
yet." It is a world of relief to him that he 
has told the physician all he knows about 
his difficulty, — Morning Sermon> May 1, 

1857. 



T 



HERE are just such spiritual farmers. 
One is running after new promises, 



another after a new faith, and another after Newnesses 
new solutions of miracles. One man has 
got a new doctrine, another man has got 
some new idea of ecclesiasticism and church 
organization, and another man has got some 
new way of putting this or that religious 
truth. There is nothing so exciting to 
them as these perpetual newnesses. They 
see their old farms left untitled, with more 
burdocks, and thistles, and weeds, growing 
209 



minister 



348 Pulpit Pungencies 349 

on every acre of them, than any wain, thrice 
loaded, could carry off! Their time and 
attention are absorbed by religious schemes 
and speculations. Poor, miserable, thrift- 
less spiritual husbandry is this. — Evening 
Sermon, October 16, 1859. 

r I ^HE-RE are in the Church what may be 
■*■ called heresy-hunters. They always 
Nimrod carry a rifle, a spiritual rifle, under their 
arm. You will find them forever outlying, 
watching for heresy, not so much in their 
own hearts, not so much in their own 
church, not so much in their own minis- 
ters, but in other people's hearts, and other 
people's churches, and other people's min- 
isters. If any man happens to hold an 
opinion respecting any doctrine which does 
not accord with their own peculiar views, 
they all spread abroad to run him down. 
They are taking care of, and defending, the 
faith ! They are searching for foxes, and 
wolves, and bears, that they suppose are 
laying waste God's husbandry ! They 
never do anything except fire at other 
210 



No great 
rise 



349 Pulpit Pungencies 352 

folks and other things. I have no doubt 
that Nimrod was a very good fellow, in his 
own poor, miserable way ; but a Nimrod 
minister is the meanest of all sorts of hunt- 
ers ! — Evening Sermon, October 16, 1859. 

A MAN goes out West and succeeds, 
and is, perhaps, sent to Washington 
as a representative : no great rise, but still, 
something ! — Morning Sermon, December 
11, 1859. 



IF you worship Christ you employ your 
powers easily and naturally. If you s J^° ial 
worship the Father there will be no special lnjury 
injury done to the feelings of the confra- 
ternal Godhead. — Morning Sermon, October 
23, 1859. 

THERE are but seven colors in nature, 
though there are thirty in the human Me S ucif ve 
soul ; and the moral color of a thing dc- now-a-days 
pends very much upon the faculty before 
which you bring it to judgment. In bring- 
ing a case into court a man looks anxiously 
21 1 



352 Pulpit Pungencies 353 

whether this or that judge is sitting this 
term, and into which court he shall bring 

Men have . . _ r T _ _ . . 

such his case. If Judge so and so is on the 

Notions 

now-a-days bench, I will get it," he says ; " but if it is 
Judge so and so, I think the chances are 
against me." Of course, all our judges are 
good men, and all our courts are equitable 
in every way ; there used to be such things 
as bribed judges, and packed juries, but 
this was in historic times, in the classic 
days of ancient Rome or Greece. But men 
have such notions now-a-days, for reasons 
best known to themselves, they think it 
makes a great deal of difference, if they 
wish to obtain the title to a piece of prop- 
erty for instance, what judge is to deter- 
mine the law, and by whom the charge to 
the jury is to be made. — Evening Setmo7i> 
May 15, 1859. 

EVEN novels are becoming preachers ; 
and better preachers than are many 
Gospel pulpits. For the novels of the last fifteen 

than many 

pulpits or twenty years contain a better Gospel 
than the pulpits, if you include the pulpits 
212 



OJO 



Pulpit Pungencies 355 



Hoeing 

in 

November 



of the Greek Church, of the Roman Church, 
of formal Protestantism, and of the warring 
sects. A dead Gospel is a hideous heresy. 
— Thanksgiving Sermon, November 24, 
1859. 

THEY are always saying, "If I had 
only known." They are like the 
farmer who, haying lost his crop from want 
of diligence in the Spring, went to harrow- 
ing and hoeing in November, to regain what 
he had lost, but who, failing in the attempt, 
said, " Oh, if I had only done right in the 
Spring ! " It is enough that you made a 
fool of yourself in the Spring. Because 
you made a fool of yourself in the Spring, 
is no reason why you should make a fool 
of yourself again in the Autumn. — Morning 
Sermon, July 24, 1859. 



THAT, from his nature, he should be a 
nursing God, a sympathizing God, A God mg 
so that it may be said literally that he feels 
what you feel, sorrows with your sorrow, 
and joys with your joy : that God should be 
213 



o 



355 Pulpit Pungencies 356 

such a Being, and do these things, is cal- 
culated, I think, to fill the heart with joy, 
and the imagination with astonishment. — 
Morning Sermon, May 1, 1859. 



1 



THANK God for the Roman Catholic 
religion. What ! thank God for the 
with^one Roman Catholic religion, with its popes, 
and cardinals, and councils, and with its 
cfoclrine of transubstantiation, and all its 
other doftrines and theories ? I don't 
thank God for the theology of the Roman 
Catholic system ; but I thank God that 
there are such men as Fenelon, such men 
as Pascal, such men as Bossuet, such men 
as More (spelt with one o — one Thomas 
More ; not Tom Moore, of vulgar noto- 
riety) ; I thank God for a Church which, 
though it may have been depraved in many 
respects, did continue, through the grace of 
God, to bring up men that have made the 
world rich, and will make it rich to the end 
of time. — Morning Sermon, yanuary 30, 

1859. 

214 



357 Pulpit Pungencies 368 

THERE are a great many men that in- 
dulge in wrong doing on week days, 
who go to church regularly on Sunday, be- 
cause they have a vague impression that 
God will offset one against the other. They 
say, when Sunday morning comes, " I have 
been bad all the week ; worse than some 
men, perhaps, but better than others ; no 
worse than the average, and now it is Sun- 
day, and I must go to church ;" and when 
Sunday night comes, they say, " I have 
been to church all day, and sat on the hard 
seat, and performed religious service, and 
it seems to me that all this ought to be 
rather an atonement for the sins I com- 
mitted during the week ; at any rate, I have 
been doing what I am told I ought to do." 
There is this impression, I say, among men, 
that they can substitute religious service 
for duty. — Evening Sermon, December 18, 

1859. 



N 



T 0\V if a man brings his thoughts and 



God 

will 

Otfeet 



feelings into higher Christian ex- SiSithe 



perience, when he takes them out his piety 
21; 



Keep 

ipplied 

itn the 

Oil of grace 



358 Pulpit Pungencies 360 

is all radiant ; but no sooner is it brought 
in contact with the world than its radiancy 
s^plfed is lost. Therefore there is no figure in the 
on of grace Bible that I am aware of which compares 
the Christian to a coal of fire, or glowing 
iron. He is always compared to a torch, 
or to a lamp that will never burn low if you 
keep it supplied with oil. We are, as Chris- 
tians, to keep ourselves supplied with the 
oil of grace. — Morning Sermon, February 
5, i860. 

EVERY tuft of grass that you tread 
beneath your feet, God made on pur- 
pose, as much as any painter ever made on 
purpose a line for hair or face on canvas. — 
Morning Sermon, July 10, 1859. 

THE idea of expatriating a million free 
men is preposterous ! Let a man 
take opium, and then talk these things, 
and we will not wonder ; but when a man 
takes the Bible, and then talks them, we 
are amazed. — Morning Sermon, July 17, 

1859. 

216 



Bible 



361 Pulpit Pungencies 362 



A 



ND I will add that, whether it be from 
its superior nervous sensibility or 



not, a blow on the head, at any period of arrange- 
ments 
life, goes quicker to the temper, and irri- 
tates more, than on any other portion of 
the body. It is not a right of family gov- 
ernment, but an outrage and an abomina- 
tion, to strike a child anywhere on the 
head. Providence has made other arrange- 
ments for family government! — Evening 
Sermon, February 26, i860. 



I THINK it would not be difficult to 
point out many churches, to which be- 
long good Christians, that would be shocked thekCSS* 

ii- 1 English 

by nothing more than to have a stranger, 
or any other person, who had the power of 
God resting on him, who had large imagina- 
tion, and was touched in his experiences, 
get up in one of their social meetings, un- 
asked by minister or deacon or officer, and 
pour out his emotions, overflowing, per- 
haps, the king's English with his feelings. 
— Morning Sermon, May 29, 1859. 
217 



Overlays 



363 Pulpit Pungencies 364 

THERE is a kind of moderation that is 
in the mind what perfect health is in 
the organs of the body. And there is a 
kind of greediness that overlays success. 
If a bird should seek to hasten forward its 
young by putting its eggs in an oven, they 
might be roasted, but they would not be 
hatched any sooner. — Evening Sermon, Feb- 
ruary 5, i860. 



THERE are some men who seem to be 
continued in life to serve as beacons 

"The world _ . , .,-■,.., 

owes us 01 warning, rather than ^uidms: lisrhts, to 

a living" ° 

those around them. It would be difficult 
to tell what a great many men who are in 
communities live for, or what they do ; and 
among these you will generally find those 
who say, "The world owes us a living." 
The world owes them a living for what ? 
For being paupers in it ; for being drudges ; 
for being moths that consume, instead of 
productive insects that multiply, as bees 
do, the stock. — Morning Sermon, May 8, 

1859. 

218 



365 Pzclpit Pungencies 366 

WHEN God wanted sponges and oys- 
ters, he made them, and put one 
on a rock, and the other in the mud. r Y hen . , 

1 God wanted 

When he made man, he did not make him Sp a ° n n d ges 
to be a sponge or an oyster ; he made him 
with feet, and hands, and head, and heart, 
and vital blood, and a place to use them, 
and said to him, " Go ! work !" — Morning 
Sermon , MarcJi 11, i860. 



and 
Oysters 



I 



SHOULD think, by the way in which 
some men describe the character of 



God and his works, that he had created a GoT's 5 
splendid package of laws, and that he was and letters to 

1 7 eternity 

continually saying to man, " Take care ; do 
not go there ; you will spoil my machine. 
Be careful ; do not get in the way of my 
purposes. I have a decree yonder ; if you 
go there it will destroy you. I cannot 
sacrifice my machine for the sake of you 
men." Some would seem to think that men 
were good in their place, but that God had 
better things than they. They would seem 
to think that God has great purposes, so 
that he cannot stop to take care of man. 
219 



366 Pttlpii Pungencies 369 

The most abominable infidelity is this. As 
though God's world was nothing but a grand 
express train, carrying his packages and 
letters to eternity, and he said to men, 
" You can ride, but I cannot look after you. 
I will carry you along, but you have got to 
look out for yourselves/' — Morning Sermon, 
April 10, 1859. 

AFTER a man has once commenced 
life, he cannot go back and start 
Papers again. He cannot rid himself of his respon- 
sibilities, and take an entirely new set of 
papers, and begin anew. — Morning Sermon, 
October 2, 1859. 



The 
*arad< 

_ round 
revivals 



NOW, there are many who enlist on the 
parade-ground of revivals, with the 

ground of * ° 

expectation that when they come out they 
will be happy, and feel good all their life. — 
Morning Sermon, July 3, 1859. 



The f" T makes no difference whether you are 

Partnership , 

law of J- acting by yourself or in your party, 

New York J J 

you will be judged by yourself. For all 
220 



369 Pulpit Pungencies 371 

your connivances with others God will bring 
you to a personal account. You will find 
that the partnership law of New York does 
not hold good out of the State of New 
York. — Evening Sermon, January 22, i860. 

IF a man is built so that he has cer- 
tain powerful instin6ts, and he at- 
tempts to kill them, or " crucify" them — the p ^ s {j )ns 
word is Scriptural, but the idea it conveys n^rSk 
is heathenish ; for that is not the idea of 
the teacher who used it — if he sets to work, 
with all his energies, to ferret out those 
parts of his nature which are necessary to 
his life, it is not possible that he should be 
free from doubts and troubles and difficul- 
ties, with reference to his religious welfare. 
Our appetites and passions are all of them 
to be controlled, used, sanctified — not kill- 
ed. — Morning Sermon, September 18, 1859. 

WHEN a man gets to reasoning about 
things which happened twenty or Pasture- 

& l l J ground 

thirty thousand years past, he is on a large 

pasture-ground, and can run without danger 

221 



37i Pulpit Pungencies 373 

of interference. — Morning Sermon, April 
24, 1859. 



T ( 



y O those who shrink from the idea that 
the Apostles made any mistake, 
h mLT e d i e n a I reply, the Apostles made no mistake in 
U c£ak those truths which they were inspired to 
teach ; but in respect to other things out- 
side of that, they were not guaranteed to 
make no mistakes. That which God meant 
them to do, they did without mistake ; but 
Paul might have made a mistake in buying 
that cloak which he says he left at some 
place. — Evening Sermon, "June 5, 1859. 



T 



THEREFORE, in our own land, I hail 
and rejoice in these very intestine 
'^PeTce" commotions, over which men are crying, 
" Peace, peace, peace !" As crickets and 
mice cry " Peace," when the farmer is turn- 
ing up their nests with his plow, so we 
have crickets, and mice, and grasshoppers, 
and all manner of inserts chirping " Peace," 
while God plows his land ! But I say, 
" Even so, Lord God Almighty, plow and 
222 



373 Pulpit Pungencies 375 

thunder on !" — Thanksgiving Sermon, No- 
v ember 24, 1859. 

THERE are some persons that love 
apples, who cannot bear to eat them me ^ gs 
with the peel on ; and there are a great 3* PeeYon 
many Christians that love to engage in 
religious devotions who cannot bear to go 
to a prayer meeting. — Morning Sermon, 
September 18, 1859. 



IF the child at an early period exhibits 
signs of dawning intelligence, and pro- 
jects itself beyond the present, the parents 
recognize that circumstance as a natural 
consequence of its normal development. 
This intelligence comes on more and more 
as the age of the child advances, and the 
boy begins to think about, and long for, 
that state in which he shall be a bigger 
boy. We smile at this, but it is the unfold- 
ing of that which ends in immortality and 
glory. The child does not wish to always 
be a child, and wear short clothes ; but it 



Perambulate 

in 
pantaloons 



looks forward with eagerness to a time 



375 Pulpit Pungencies 376 

when it expefts to be a boy, and perambu- 
late the streets in pantaloons. — Morning 
Sermon, October 30, 1859. 

THERE is such a thing as sleepy, lazy 
praying. And I do not refer alone 

Prayers worn x J ^ 

smooth t j-he long prayer in church, or to the pre- 
Pe ^ c C e 0ry composed liturgical forms of prayer em- 
ployed by particular classes of Christians. 
Oftentimes men's prayers, if I may so say, 
get worn smooth, and their mind slips off 
from the words without taking their mean- 
ing. You will find eminent men in the 
Episcopal and Catholic Churches — such 
men as Fenelon — complaining that there 
are times when it is impossible for them to 
use their service books, because their mind 
will not take hold of the words, and the 
service becomes perfunctory. And often- 
times those whose prayers are extempora- 
neous have their forms, as really as those 
who pray from books. There are many 
persons who oftentimes wake up in the 
midst of their prayers, and find that they 
have been saying over sentences without 
224 



376 Pulpit Pungencies 378 

having any sense of their meaning. — 
Wednesday Evening Lecture, December 28, 
i860. 

T ET your communication be, Yea, 
-* — * yea ; Nay, nay." Let it be sim- 
ply, Yes, it is ; or, No, it is not. There a 

Perpendicu-J 

are no gradations between them. It is a *** Yes or a 

Perpendicu- 

perpendicular Yes, or a perpendicular No larNo 
— one or the other. The special applica- 
tion of the passage, to be sure, was to pro- 
fanity, but it is just as applicable to truth- 
speech as to oath-speech. We have no 
right to grade either way. — Morning Ser- 
mo7i y June 26, 1859. 

A FRENCH philosopher professed to 
comprise our whole being in three 
things. The first was occupation, the second philosopher 
was occupation, and the third was occupa- 
tion ! And there was a great deal of wis- 
dom in that, more than we expect to find in 
a philosopher, for that word usually means 
to imply a singular man who don't know 
anything. — Evening Sermon, July 17, 1859. 



379 Pulpit Pungencies 380 



s 



Pianos 



OME men keep their goodness as 
people do their pianos. They have 

Conscience , , r , . , 

and them shut up, most 01 the time, at one side 
of the parlor ; and when they have looked 
after the affairs of the kitchen, and taken 
their meals, and waited upon their company, 
and attended to all their other duties, then, 
for relaxation, they open them, and play a 
few tunes upon them. Some men keep 
their conscience shut up a good part of the 
time, and once in awhile, for a change, they 
open it, and play upon it. They find it a 
little out of tune, but they do not mind 
that. — Morning Sermon, June 12 , 1859. 



w 



Pick 



E are all of us merely developing 
spirit in matter or out of matter. 

Fruits 

for God to We are gaining that viftory which God 
means the immortal shall gain over the 
mortal, the transient, the perishing. We 
are producing from these roots, these stems 
— our bodies — blossoms and fruits which 
God shall be willing to pick, that he may 
show them again in another life. — Morning 
Sermon, March 4, i860. 
226 



381 Pulpit Pungencies 383 



T 



HERE is not a little, piddling justice's 
court in the whole nation that is not 



subject to the authority of our highest 'piddling e 

justice's 

courts. The highest court governs all the court 
lower courts, clear down to the bottom of 
our judicial system. And God has made 
the human soul so that its highest faculty 
shall govern all the faculties below it, clear 
down to the bottom. — Morning Sermon, 
June 12, 1859. 



"\ T 7 HEN a man comes to have this itch 



for gold, this insanity of rolling 
over and increasing wealth, there are no 
bounds to his desire to accumulate. Though 
he were to roll his pile as fast as the globe 
rolls, he would not be satisfied. — Evening 
Sermon, January 15, i860. 



Roll his 
Pile 



I 



THINK that men in this world are 
like a pismire running up on one of a 

Pismire on 

the pyramids of Egypt, going to take a "^J^jjj 
prospect. The little insect creeps, and 
creeps, and creeps, a whole day, and only 
gets up a very short distance compared 

227 



A 



383 Pulpit Pungencies 384 

with the whole height of the structure, and 

he is so surrounded by bits of stones, and 

PismSeon other objects which adhere to its side, that 

one of the 

pyramids he cannot see anything. So he creeps on 
and on, and he may, perhaps, in the course 
of a week, get half way up to the top, if the 
wind does not happen to blow him off, and 
no other accident befalls him ; and then he 
cannot see anything, for he finds himself 
behind a crevice, or in a crack. Now he 
creeps and creeps again in another direc- 
tion ; and how long do you suppose it will 
take him to get so high that he can look 
over all the world ; and when he does, what 
is an ant's judgment about the world good 
for? — Morning Sermon, April 24, 1859. 



H 



OW many do we now see among us 
who are dragging themselves along 

Takes you § . . 

shoulders through life, reaping the inevitable conse- 

Pkdfes quences of an overtaxed body, because they 

}0U blV " esteem business and profits above health 

and comfort. They say, " I would fain 

stop, but I can see no place to stop." By- 

and-by, when disease takes you by the 

228 



384 Pulpit Pungencies 386 

shoulders and pitches you on the bed, I 
think you will find a place to stop ! When 
the undertaker comes along you will find 
a place to stop ! — Morning Sermon, July 
24, 1859. 

/^* OD will not judge offices, but he will 
^--* judge men that hold the offices. It 
makes no difference what permissions are P ™ e er 
allowed in any office which you may hold, an office 
you are bound to find out what is right — 
and that you can do in this age of Bible 
privileges — and square your conduct by it. 
No wrong thing is covered up by the plas- 
ter of an office. — Evening Sermon, January 
22, i860. 

ABOVE all things, do not go near those 
places that are called Haunts of 

x Pleasure 

Pleasure. They are the houses of pleasure ^^^ 
on the outside, and the houses of damnation 
on the inside ! No man can begin to visit 
them with any sort of presumption that he 
will do other than end in rottenness and 
perdition ! When a man is sequestered, 
229 



386 Pulpit Pungencies 387 

night after night, away from ordinary in- 
fluences and restraints, and where there is 
glitter, and stimulant, and novelty, and 
temptation, he cannot but be contaminated. 
— Evening Sermon, November 20, 1859. 



T 



HEN there are the pedigree farmers, 
not unknown among men in natural 

Plump up to 

Peter husbandry. They have got the very poor- 
est fruit to be found in the whole neighbor- 
hood, bearing the highest sounding names. 
They have got the most marvelous pears, 
the most wonderful apples, the most extraor- 
dinary strawberries. They give the most 
astonishing names to the most meagre, 
miserable fruit. But then, it has such high- 
sounding titles ! There are these same 
men whose herds are about the poorest, the 
scrawniest, and the weakest in the whole 
country round about them ; but they have 
a pedigree that takes them back, every one 
of them, to Noah's Ark ! Their oxen are 
lean, their cows are milkless, but they are 
proud of them nevertheless, they have such 
a noble pedigree ! They are uncurried, 
230 



3S7 Pulpit Pungencies 389 

unfatted, and unfatable, to be sure ; but ah, 
what a line of blood did they spring from ! 
Did you never see just such husbandmen in 
the Church ? — men who had no greater mo- 
rality, or piety, or spiritual experience, but 
who went back through a long pedigree, one 
going plump up to Peter, and another plump 
up to Paul, and others plump up to the 
prophets themselves \-~-Evening Sermon, 
October 16, 1859. 



1 



SAY that that idea of manhood which 
makes one man high because he is oc a nd 
pocket-full, and another man low because empty 
he is pocket-empty, is heathenish, and un- 
worthy of men who have lived any length 
of time within sight of a Bible. — Morning 
Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



A 



MAN who would not help a fellow- 

A villain 

creature flying for his liberty, must „ ,? r .» 



Politician 



be either a villain or a politician. — Evening 
Sermon, October 30, 1859. 
231 



390 Pttlpit Pungencies 391 

A I ^HERE is not a fact which I am so 
disciples ^ glad about, as that the disciples were 
Poor feiiows such poor fellows as they were. You all 
know that we need a God who can love a 
sinner — a real sinner — a man who is such 
a sinner that the great waves of mercy 
break upon him as the waves of ocean 
break against the rocks of the coast ; a 
man whose veins pulse with the fever of 
vice, who feels the thunder-clap of hate ; a 
man who sins morning and night. What ! 
can God love such a man ? The universal 
heart is saying : can God love a man away 
down where I am ? Why don't you go to 
some good Orthodox church, and listen to 
some staid man ? is said to the disconsolate 
searcher for truth. How dare you go to 
these Theodore Parkers and Chapins ! How 
dare you Christians have to do with these 
fishermen ? — Morning Sermon, January 2, 
1859. 

ASTRONOMY never said to a man, 
" The sun is the centre of the solar 

of Cod's 

Portfolio S y S tem, and your earth revolves around it 

232 



39i Pulpit Pungencies 393 

in a certain fixed orbit." Chemistry never 
said to anybody, " You are walking upon an 
earth composed of minute atoms of matter." 
We found them out. We had to find them 
out, or not know them. They were in 
God's book, in his portfolio, which he 
spread out before us, and from which we 
pulled out the papers ourselves. — Morning 
Sermon, April 24, 1859. 



PEOPLE should be hungry with the 
eye and the ear, as well as the mouth. Ponhoies 
When all a man's necessaries of life are stomach 
those which go in at the portholes of the 
stomach, it is a bad sign. — Evening Ser- 
mon, May 8, 1859. 



NATURAL laws are like our post- 
offices, only they never advertise. Natu a r ^ laws 
If any man has a letter there, he can get it 
by asking. — Evening Sermon, March 18, 
i860. 

233 



394 Pupit Pungencies 395 

\\ 70RK your troubles up! If a man 

* * fills my house with thorns, I will 

make not go about saying, " What a distressed 

the Pot & . 

*boii state of things is this !" They are good to 
make the pot boil, if for nothing else. — 
Morning Sermon, yanuary 18, i860. 



HAVE in my mind a former acquaint- 
sermols -J- ance — a clergyman — who met with 

instead of . . r 

Preaching great success so long as he gave up his life 
to his pursuit with a large, free, generous 
feeling ; but he wished to be a father of the 
Church, and to be eminent for prudence, 
and for a way of looking at things in the 
light of judgment and reason. So he went 
to writing sermons, instead of preaching 
them ; and the result is, that he has come 
to be very much like what a wasp's nest is 
in the last days of Autumn — an empty, 
patched-up house of mud, on the dry side 
of a rafter. — Morning Sermon, June 5, 

1859. 



234 



396 Pulpit Pungencies 398 



1 



N poisoning your worldly prosperity, 
you have been able to maintain your- 



self ; and do you suppose that when you on"the m 

• road to 
conform to the laws of nature and provi- hell 

dence, and to God's moral law, you will find 

it harder to maintain yourself? In other 

words, has God put a premium on the road 

to hell? — Morning Sermon, December 18, 

1859. 



1 



T is supposed that physicians have a 



prescriptive right to lie to their pa- prescriptive 
tients. Now, do you suppose that it is to g iie 
necessary for a physician to damn his own 
soul in order to save his patient's body ? — 
Morning Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



PAUL says, " For in nothing am I behind 
the very chiefest Apostles, though I P !o e " y 
am nothing." That was putting the other 
Apostles down pretty low ; but still, it shows 
the spirit of the man. — Morning Sermon, 
Aprils 1859. 

235 



399 Pulpit Pungencies 399 

WHEN a man is in debt, with but 
three cents in his pocket, and he 
sees the constable coming, how the poor 
have° U to V give wretch sneaks and skulks about to keep out 
Pretty quick of the officer's way ! But suppose a man 
who is in debt, and who has been dodging 
between prison and officer for weeks and 
months, should be told, " An estate has 
been left you, and now you have only to 
draw and you are sovereign of half a million 
of dollars-!" He hastens to New York, 
without even stopping to change his clothes, 
to ascertain the truth of this unexpected 
piece of intelligence. The moment he finds 
that he has not been misinformed, he is a 
new man. Now he does not dread those 
whom he has dreaded so long. He walks 
up to the officer and says, " I am not afraid 
of you any more." He faces his creditors 
and says, " Get out of my way, I am a dif- 
ferent man from what I have been. You 
can take me if you please, but you will 
have to give me up again pretty quick/' — 
Morning Sermon, October 2, 1859. 



236 



springs 



400 Pulpit Pungencies 402 

WHAT will you do about these fafts ? 
You can jump over them ; but in P ]£^Sd U3 
order to do that you have got to jump over 
the globe ; and a man must be hard pressed 
to take such prodigious logical springs ! — 
Evening Sermon, October 23, 1859. 



GOD says, " I will give you, if you 
ask, myself and all that I have, and 
make you my heirs ;" and when a man is a good 

Property 

an heir of God, there is a good property 
coming to him. — Evening Sermon, October 
9, 1859. 



PROPHECIES, as I understand them, 
are things of the vaguest and most 

o mi t->i Prophecies 

general character possible. They are what like 

music to an 

music is to an army while marching. arm y 
When Napoleon was going over the Alps, 
and his soldiers had become nearly ex- 
hausted with dragging the heavy artillery 
after them, he ordered his band to sound a 
charge, and the moment the soldiers heard 
that charge, they were indued with double 
237 



Proud 

as 

the devil 



402 Pulpit Pungencies 403 

strength, and they pitched up the heights 
with comparative ease. — Morning Sermon, 
Aprils 1859. 

HERE is a man with a family, who is a 
perfect tyrant at home. He says, 
" I am master of this house," and he makes 
his servants, his children, and, if he can, 
his wife, run at his bidding. Everybody in 
that house knows that he has the inflexible 
will of a man who experts to make all 
those with whom he has anything to do 
submit to him. He is a prominent Chris- 
tian, a deacon, a class-leader, or something 
of that sort. When he goes out he takes 
his hat and makes it all smooth, and takes 
care that his other clothing shall give him 
as much an appearance of meekness as 
possible ; and he puts a mild look on his 
face ; and as he walks along he bows softly 
to everybody ; and he makes himself 
obsequious wherever he goes, and that is 
what he calls being humble ; but he is as 
proud as the devil in his heart. — Morning 
Sermon, April 3, 1859. 
238 



404 Pulpit Pungencies 407 

I HAVE noticed that God's providence Providence 
is on the side of clear heads. — Evening c i ea r heads 
Sermon, February 10, i860. 

SOME men go through life as steamers 
do through the sea, beating every 
wave with their paddles and bows, deter- p p ro ^ s 
mined to domineer over wind and storm. mtolife 
But it must be a well-built man that can 
put his prow into life, and go in a straight 
line to the point at which he aims, by 
means of his own sheer sagacity and 
strength. — Morning Sermon, June 12, 
1859. 

SOME persons seem to think that a 
child is like a farm, and cannot be 
pulverised too much ; and so they plow it, p C hUdTen d 
and harrow it, and cross it, and turn it up 
and down as it does not like to be turned. 
— Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 



1 



T is a pity to see a great dwelling in 

i-i 1 • ^ r ^ Only the 

which everything appears to dwari the Punctuation 



occupant — in which the occupant is the wealth 
239 



407 Pulpit Pungencies 411 

least circumstance. I have seen men that 
were only the punctuation of their wealth. 
— Evening Sermon, February 5, i860. 



A want of 
Push \^/ 



CONTENTMENT does not consist in 
a want of push. — Morning Sermon, 
June 5, 1859. 



T SUPPOSE the prophets spoke as 

whatever X speaking trumpets, whatever God put 
U them Ug through them. — Morning Sermon, January 
15, i860. 

73 EALLY, so far as we have any record 
autherest -*■ ^ on the subject, Paul did more than 

Put 

together all the rest of the apostles put together. — 
Morning Sermon, April 3, 1859. 



D' 



Old 



O you not know that old Putnam need 
not have dashed down that rocky 
Put precipice, on horseback, with swords and 
carbines after him ? He need not have 
crept into the cave where the wolf was, 
lighting himself with the wolf's eyes while 
he snapped his gun at his head. He might 
240 



4ii Ptclpit Pungencies 413 

have sat at home, and avoided risking his 
life in this manner ; but would he then 
have been Old Put ? Why was it that 
every man had so much confidence in his 
valor ? It was because peril was sweeter 
to him than security, and whenever there 
was a danger to be met, he was the first to 
meet it. His daring exploits taught men 
to regard him as a stalwart old yeoman, fit 
to lead where men were to be led. But, 

He that fights and runs away, 
Shall live to run another day. 

— Morning Sermon, May 22, 1859. 

IT is not to be wondered at that we have 
such imperfect views of God, when 
we remember how we come by them ; that 
we derived them from catechisms and 
creeds, and confessions of faith, which were 
rammed into us at the expense of losing 
our suppers and dinners on Sunday. — 
Morning Sermon, Febritary 27, 1859. 

THERE is but one pleasant scene in 
the whole case, and that is the 
simple fidelity of this grateful man to the 
241 



Rammed 
into us 



413 Pulpit Pungencies 414 

truth, and the unflinching witness borne to 
hifhead Christ, to his own damage, There is no 
authority question that at the time the event under 
consideration took place, this man cut the 
worst figure of all who had to do with it. 
The synagogue stood, all the officers and 
the parents were in good favor, everybody 
smiled, and everything was pleasant and 
brotherly, except so far as this one man was 
concerned. He, poor, miserable fellow, 
ran his head against authority recklessly, 
and was kicked out of the synagogue, and 
stood all alone ! — Evening Sermon. Decem- 
ber 11, 1859. 



IT was a remarkable saying of one of the 
Revolutionary heroes, when Congress, 

providence 

vs > instead of passing a bill for more soldiers, 

strong r ° 

Regiments reC0 mmended a day for fasting and prayer, 
that there might be a good deal in fasting 
and prayer, but he had noticed that God's 
providence was on the side of strong 
regiments. — Evening Sermon, February 10, 
i860. 

242 



415 Pulpit Ptmgencies 416 



Y 



OU know that in the business of 
publishing there are what are called 



" the remainders." If an edition of a book Remainders 

of 

is published, and it is not all sold, the part the Church 
that remains unsold is called " the remain- 
der " of that edition. And in manufactur- 
ing establishments and stores there is a 
great amount of stock which is called 
" remnants," and which consists of scraps, 
and shop-worn goods that are left over. 
Now I think that the church and the com- 
munity are full of " remnants" and " re- 
mainders" — men that are left over.- — Even- 
ing Sermon, December 18, 1859. 



N 



OW God says, " Here is your duty for 



to-day, and the means with which God » s 

t . r^ >ii r i 'j Remittances 

to do it. lo-morrow you will find remit- 
tances and further directions ; next week 
you will find other remittances and other 
directions ; next month you will find others ; 
and next year still others." — Morning Scr- 
^inon y December 18, 1859. 



243 



417 Pulpit Pungencies 419 

OUPPOSE it is your rent, which is due 
iTi'yo^ ^ next week. It is true that trusting 

Pant O 

will not pay it ; neither will fretting about 
it pay it. — Morning Sermon , April 10, 1859. 



Suppose 



Rent 



Rented 



T 



HERE are many who have no furni- 
ture of their own — it is all rented ; 
n and re and there are as many and more, all of 
whose opinions are borrowed. A tale is 
told. Some sinner is brought to light, and 
the evening circle, the fashionable circle, 
are shocked at some high crime and mis- 
demeanor, not against the laws of God, but 
of etiquette. — Evening Sermon, February 

12, i860. 



I 



AM shocked, I am disgusted with the 
ignominiousness of repentance among 
sin in men before God, when they are so reluc- 

RcpenUng ' J 

tant about it. I think men sometimes 
commit more sin in repenting, than they 
do in performing the things of which they 
repent. — Morning Sermon, May 1, 1859. 
244 



420 Pulpit Pungencies 422 

HERE and there, God makes a reser- A 
voir-man, and other men draw at Re man° ir " 
him and take their supplies from him. — 
Evening Sermon, March 18, i860. 



THERE are some men who gain their 
livelihood as the lazy farmer gets his 
grist, who ties his bag to the trough of the 
mill, and sits down and waits till his bag is 
filled, and then carries it home. Business 
men who live that lazy sort of life are said 
to be " retired." We do not count them as 
among the living forces of human life. 
They have retired from life. When we 
talk about men, we do not talk about such 
men. — Morning Sermon, October 30, i860. 



Retired 



CHILDREN at first are mere animals. 
The most absolute animals on the 
globe, I think, are these little pulpy chil- R FaInt , ly d 
dren. They are, as they roll about, like atthat 
sunfish floating through the water — round, 
plump, and beautiful to look at, but good 
for nothing — absolutely nothing. I will 
not say they are at zero — they are below 
245 



422 Pulpit Pungencies 425 

zero. They seem to be the connecting 
link between nothing and something, and 
very faintly revealed at that. — Morning Ser- 
mon, April 24, 1859. 



M 



EX are not to have their Christian 
graces like revolving light-houses, 
Revolving that flash a white light then a red light, 

graces ° ' ° ' 

and then a space of darkness, to be follow- 
ed by separate flashes. — Morning Sermon, 
February 5, i860. 



A 



MAN may call the church whatever 
names he pleases ; he may call min- 
Right isters whatever names he pleases ; he may 

between 

the joints call me an enthusiast, a bisrot, or a fanatic 

ofthe ' ° ' 

hamess — those things do not touch near where I 
live ; but when a man says to me, " You 
are worldly-minded," that does hit right 
between the joints of the harness ! — Morn- 
ing Sermon, August 14, 1859. 

ALL such virtues as gentleness, neat- 
ness, order, punctuality, courtesy, 
attention to etiquette, fidelity in small 
246 



425 Pulpit Pungencies 426 

matters, the avoidance of meanness, of 
negligence, of slackness — all these are Ri g h t u P and 
things of more than minor importance. A son of a 

fellow 

man cannot justify himself for neglecting 
these things by saying, " I have a robust 
nature, and am a right-up-and-down sort 
of a fellow, and people cannot expe6l me to 
have any of these little finical graces. ,, — 
Evening Sermon, January 22, i860. 



WHERE a man carries himself in his 
conscience, and in his religion, he 
is not at the mercy of any outward circum- ^'p 
stances ; but where a man carries himself destroy him 
in his own pocket, a rip may destroy him. 
The men who are usually counted to be the 
first men, can be spilled out of a hole in 
the bottom of their pocket ;• and there is 
nothing stands between the highest and 
the lowest, but just the difference in the 
state of their pockets. — Morning Sermon, 
May 8, 1859. 



247 



Hot-house 



427 Pulpit Pungencies 429 

DO you believe that there is any such 
thing as a hot-house, where they can 

Ripening 

Souls ripen human souls as they ripen pine- 
apples in these northern climes ? — Evening 
Sermon , May 22 , 1859. 



CONVERSION is to a man's soul just 
what ripening is to grapes. They 
men & hang in the right form ; every one of them 

just like 

Ripening has skin and seeds, but all of them are 



grapes 



sour. But just let them hang there long 
enough in the bright sunshine till it makes 
them sweet, and they are converted, That 
is exaftly what conversion means to man. 
He hangs there, but sour, until he sees 
what is the power of God, the love of God 
and the spirit of God becomes sweetened 
to him. — Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



I THINK that the whole round globe is 
but a cradle, and that God rocks it 

vith his foot , . 

with his foot. — Morning Sermon, May 1, 



i8 59 . 

248 



430 Pulpit Pungencies 431 



T 



HERE are many whose whole idea of 
attainment and character, is that 



they are simply implements of success in biadei 

men 

secular life. It is getting along that they 

& & . Rodgers' 

think of. Refinement, culture and religion knives 
are valuable, because with them a man can 
better serve himself in this life. They 
look upon men as they do upon knives. 
They think single-bladed men are poor 
creatures. In their view some men are 
double -bladed, and some have as many 
blades as Rodgers' famous pattern-knives 
which are displayed to tempt customers. 
— Morning Sermon, November 27, 1859. 

THERE are many men that will not 
get away from trouble when they 
can. If there is trouble in one room they .30 Rooms 

J in a man's 

will not so much as go into another room head 
to avoid it. A wise man, when he finds 
himself in a room where there is trouble, 
goes out of it as soon as possible. Now 
God has put at least thirty rooms in a 
man's mind, and if there is trouble in one, 
he can go up to the next one, and if the 
249 



43i Pulpit Pungencies 433 

trouble comes into that, he can go up to 
the next, and, if necessary, he can keep go- 
ing up-stairs till he gets upon the roof; 
and the higher he goes, the more tired will 
troubles get of flying up after him. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, July 24, 1859. 

THIS, then, is the secret of life — to 
seek all you can lay your hand on, 
R^st on but to seek it only as a round of a ladder 
which is good for nothing for a man to sit 
and roost on, but is good to enable him to 
take another step, that step being only 
preliminary to the next. — -Morning Sermon, 
March II, i860. 



M 



EN who are distinguished from their 
fellow-men by their sharpness, 
Rot ^nd hild tnen ~ tact, their management, and who 
Moses become the world's merchant princes, 
though they seem very material, have more 
faith than almost any other class among 
us. It may be a pecuniary faith, a com- 
mercial faith, but it is faith. Baring 
Brothers are men of faith, though their 
250 



433 Pulpit Pungencies 435 

faith may not be of the highest order. 
Old Rothschild is a man of faith, though 
his faith is very different from that which 
Moses had. Moses lived as seeing Him 
who is invisible ; and Rothschild lives as 
seeing it which is invisible. The power 
of foreseeing which Moses had, was the 
same that Rothschild has. — Morning Ser- 
mon, October 30, 1859. 

\\ THEN you get an apple that is half 

* » rotten, the other half beins; as „ lrr> 

7 ° Half- Rotten 

good as though the whole were sound, then a ^ es 
you can get a Christian that is rotten on rliUans 
one side, who is as good on the other side 
as if both sides were good. — Morning Ser- 
mon, September \%i 1859. 

OTHER children don't get broken in 
so easily — perhaps from something 
in themselves, and perhaps from a want of a Royal 
skill on the part of their parents. In such 'right 7 
cases there comes a time when there is a 
royal family fight, and the question is who 
shall come out ahead, the father and 
251 



435 Pulpit Pungencies 438 

mother, or the child. — Morning Sermon, 
February 5, i860. 



1 



DO not need a God, whose business 
it is to rub up the stars and keep 
a God to them bright, to turn the vast wheel of the 

Rub up the 

stars universe, and by infinite forces to take care 
of globes and human beings, but a God 
who tells me, " The hairs of your head 
are all numbered," and who says, " Not a 
sparrow falls to the ground without my 
notice." — Morning Sermon, ynly 3, 1859. 



1 



SHOULD be sorry to think that there 

Got A was a man ^ ere w ^° h a d not g°t a 

Satnt saint. I have one. — Evening Sermon, Oc- 



tober 9, 1859. 



IT is quite in vain for a man to set apart 
hours to pray, if he gives to Satan 

vs. 

Satan all the rest of his time. — Morning Sermon, 
January 22, i860. 

252 



439 Pulpit Pungencies 441 

THE Satan of sacred literature is im- 
possible to any rational man, or impossible 
rational mind. — Evening Sermon, October 
23, 1859. 

I DO not think there is a thing about 
which men sin more than they do in 
this matter of lying. They lie from their f c n ot ° C h 
birth. From the womb they go spreading P reacher 
lies. David said, in his haste, that all men 
were liars ; and an old Scotch preacher 
very shrewdly remarked that he never took 
it back when he got leisure. — Morning Ser- 
mon, June 26, 1859. 



D 



ID you ever hear how the string of a 



harp or a violin complains when you Men don » t 
begin to turn the key, and screw it up to screwed up 
concert pitch ? How it wails ! And yet 
when it is screwed tight, it discourses 
glorious music — and only then. Men do 
not like to be screwed up, but they all 
want good music brought out of them. 
God knows better than they do what con- 
ditions are required for such music, and he 
253 



Business 



441 Pulpit Pungencies 444 

turns the keys of life, and brings them, at 
last, into concord ; but it is late before 
many of them are fit to be played upon. — 
Evening Sermon, October 9, 1859. 

BUSINESS leaks at every seam be- 
cause men are not trustworthy. — 

at every m 

Seam Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 

THERE are men that have a selvage 
of goodness to the garment of their 
Selvage character, which makes them appear like 

of goodness x * 

good men ; and yet, if you look at their 
character as a whole, you shall find that 
they are mean, hard, selfish, pinching, 
stingy men. — Evening Sermon, February 
10, i860. 



A 



S men begin in life so they are very 
apt to continue. As in water 
set cement, the form very soon hardens almost 
to a stone, so any moral habit very soon 
gives a set to conduct, and then it is almost 
like breaking flint to change that condu6l. 
— Evening Sermon, November 20, 1859. 
254 



445 



Pulpit Pungencies 



447 



IT would be better for us if we had more 
childishness about ourselves. Masons 
know that that work is never good which sets 
too quick. If manhood sets too quick, it is 
apt to be stiff and brittle, — Evening Ser- 
vian, February 26, i860, 



If manhood 

Sets 

too quick 



I WOULD rather be a nobody, and have 
no character and no responsibility, 
than to be one of those miserable, truckling 
men in God's service, who are forever 
watching their influence, for fear they shall 
lose it. Suppose you should see a man 
going up and down some street, and you 
should ask him why he did it, and he should 
say : " God has committed to me the 
responsibility of a shadow, and I am taking 
care that I do not lose my shadow!" — 
Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



The 

responsi- 
bility 
of a 
Shadow 



THERE are those who recognize only, 
or mainly, their own agency in this 
world. They see no living forces but them- 
selves. Their state of mind depends upon 
how much blood they have, how good their 
255 



447 Pulpit Pung 

digestion is, whether or not hope is the 
largest organ in their head, and the amount 
of spirituality they possess. They think 

God 

shakes there is but one law, namely, that every 

the conceit J J 

out of them man should carve out his own course 
through life. If they are successful, their 
success must be achieved on a low plane — 
i: must be a creature-good, as divines some- 
times call it. It can, at best, yield them 
only temporary comforts. If they are 
destined to a higher good, they are soon 
handled in a manner calculated to modify 
their ideas of their own independence. 
God shakes the conceit out of them. — 
Morning Sermon, September 25, 1859. 

OXE of the noblest men I ever saw on 
earth, and now I believe in Heaven, 

hands 

-a man standing as high as any State 



means 



of grace coi-ilcl put her sons in places of honor and 
trust — I have noticed that he never met an 
acquaintance that he did not stop and 
shake hands with him. Though I have 
met him as often as ten or twelve times a 
day, I never passed him without his shak- 



448 Pulpit Pungencies 451 

ing me by the hand. At first it seemed 
strange, but I soon came to feel the power 
which it awakened in me ; the sense of 
his interest and kindly feeling causes a 
reciprocation of it, and I came at last to 
shake hands with him almost as a means 
of grace. — Evening Sermon, May 1, 1859. 

IF a man has come to that point where A 
he is content, he ought to be put in *££££ 
his coffin ; for a contented live man is a 
sham ! — Morning Sermon, March n, i860. 

WE are apt to carry ourselves as men 
arrange their stores. The newest 
and most attractive goods are in the win- shar and yed 
dows ; but those which are old, or shop- 
worn, or rotten, or adulterated, are taken 
far back in the half-lights, where sharp- 
eyed clerks sell to bat-eyed customers. — 
Morning Sermon, November 27, 1859. 



is a Sham I 



bat-eyed 



H 



OW many men there arc, who, after 

having been in the church ten or ^^^3 



twenty years, are just about where they 

were when they first entered it. They are 

257 



roof 



451 Pulpit Pungencies 452 

a little better in this or that field — a little 
improved in spots — but the annual harvest 
is not much more at the end of twenty 
years than it was at the end of five years. 
Lazy Christians ! shiftless Christians ! un- 
growing and unfruitful Christians ! — Even- 
ing Sermon , October 16, 1859. 



1 



N our day there is as much division in 
the Church as there has been at any 
putting previous period. Christ as a doftrine will 

Shingles , 

on tiie unite churches ; Christ as the emancipator 
of those in bondage will divide the whole 
Church. Christ making men strong and 
rich outwardly, and Christ as patron and 
prote6lor of men that are strong and rich 
outwardly, will unite the whole community ; 
Christ giving rights to the weak and the 
poor will divide the whole community. 
Christ putting shingles on the roof of the 
temple of Christianity, as men have fashion- 
ed it, will be received ; Christ changing 
the foundations of that temple will be re- 
jected. — Morning Sermon, December 25, 

1859- 

258 



453 Pulpit Pungencies 454 

I BELIEVE that men are oftener de- 
stroyed by the character of the feel- 
ings which they carry on account of their 
troubles, than by the force of the troubles 
themselves. Here is a man, for instance, 
who, when he fell down, broke his courage 
short off in the middle. He was only forty- 
five or fifty years of age, and, if he had 
only thought so, he could have got up on 
his hands, and then upon his knees, and 
then up on his feet ; and in the course of 
five years he could have put himself to 
rights again. But he broke his courage 
in two in the middle, and from that day 
he has never got up. He is like a man 
with a broken spine, who never has any 
feeling down in his feet. — Morning Sermon, 
June 12, 1859. 



1 



THINK the most humiliating thing a 
person could do — but our vanity will 



Short off 

in 

the middle 



not let us do it — would be to sit down and Fretted 

and stewed 

think how he has fretted and stewed and simmered 
simmered in advance, about griefs and 
troubles which never came as he anticipat- 
259 



454 Pulpit Pungencies 457 

ed they would. — Morning Setmoii, December 
18, 1859. 

OF thousands upon thousands of young 
men Sing Sing is asking, " When 
ih|?oS will they come ?" Wait patiently, old Pri- 
son, they are on the way ! — Everting Ser- 
mon, March 4, i860. 



m I E are not obliged to sit in our minds 

with all the doors open, nor with 

all the windows open. We have a right of 



w 



To 

Sit in our 
minds 

windows reserve, of self-inclosure, of refusing to let 



open 



men know what we are, what we think, and 
what we do. — Morning Sermon, June 26, 
1859. 



NEVER resort — except where you find 
that a kind of moral plaster is 
necessary to promote inward inflammation, 
Th way lsa or to draw it off! — to these snappings, and 
1 ro slin e pinchings, and slappings, and degrading 
annoyances, which are so detestable. But 
where there is raised up against you a little 
tyrannic will that must be subdued, if by 
260 



457 Pulpit Pungencies 460 

patient reasoning and persuasion you can 
not subdue it, there is a way by which you 
can do it through the skin ; and when you 
do it, do it thoroughly, and be done with it. 
— Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 

I HATE French words — there is no A11 Skiu 
depth in them — they are all skin and p^ish 
polish. — Evening Sermon, May 1, 1859. 

THERE are some men that are born so 
sleazy that it seems as though no sew- B orn 
ing would make them into garments of any 
account. — Morning Sermon, March 1 1, i860. 



Sleazy 



Christian 



TAKE somebody who is rather faulty, 
who you think is a slippery Chris- 
tian, and whom you like to disse<5t, and sgsp«y 
remember that the work of grace is begun 
in him, and lift him up, and imagine what 
he will be in the future, till you see him 
enveloped in a flood of God's glory, and 
then look at him. — Wednesday Evening 
Lecture, November 16, 1859. 



261 



46 1 Pulpit Pungencies 462 



T 



V HE acquisition by mankind of the 
knowledge at present in the world, 
has been the work of now more than three 

Remarkably 

Smart thousand years — for it is only within the 
last three thousand years that man has 
thought of studying much. The human 
race, in this respect, is like our children. 
We do not think of putting' them to school 
before they are three or four, and some- 
times five or six years old, unless they are 
remarkably smart — and all children are. 
— Morning Sermon, April 22, 1859. 



T 



S HERE never was any smell so sweet 
to me at sea, as the breeze that came 
Near enough ff the land, When I returned from Eu- 

to 

heaven ro P e > an d first smelled this continent, I did 
not know what it was, as I walked, or 
rather staggered, about the deck, but I felt 
a wonderful sense of reviving, an odor of 
something sweet ; and that moment my 
appetite returned, and from that moment I 
lost all sea-sickness, and felt like a new 
man. I think it should be so when we 
come near heaven ; the moment we are 
262 



462 Pupit Pungencies 463 

near enough to smell the odor of the land, 
that moment every man should throw away 
all earth-sickness, and feel himself growing 
strong and young again. — Evening Sermon, 
June 5, 1809. 



MEX build up good, men build up 
character in this world, as the 
artist produces a painting ; as, for instance, nl 

t-^ , , II- • • • - r Smouch 

Raphael wrought his exquisite picture oi 
the Madonna, which required days, and 
weeks, and months of the closest appli- 
cation, and which progressed little by little, 
touch by touch, with a brush whose tip was 
not bigger than the point of a pin ; or, as 
a beautiful rainbow is produced, which is 
wrought out, little touches by little touches, 
day after day, week after week, and month 
after month being required for its execu- 
tion. Suppose an artist, after having com- 
pleted such a picture, in a moment of 
intoxication, goes into his studio, takes his 
brush, dips it into black paint, and applies 
it thereto. Only one smouch and the work 
263 



463 Pulpit Pungencies 465 

of months is destroyed ! — Morning Sermon, 
January 23, 1859. 



1 



T makes a great difference whether a 

Everybody X sin is amusing or not about its being 

Sobefones tolerated — laughable lies and wickednesses 

go along smoothly, when everybody kicks 

sober ones. — Morning Sermon, June 26, 

1859. 

SOME men are like empty ships, which 
dance and toss about like egg-shells 
lives on the water, but which, if you load them, 
and sink them down to the deck, will ride 
steadily through the waves. Many men 
have to experience real trouble before they 
will carry an even keel ; and then they 
make good voyages. In the case of not a 
few, real trouble is the best thing that can 
happen to them. Many men are like old 
pastures which are very short and turf- 
bound, which do not like to be plowed, 
but the usefulness of which, as is shown 
by the crops they produce, is materially 
increased by their being turned over to 
264 



465 Pulpit Pungencies 467 

the depth of fifteen inches or so. Many- 
men do not like to have their old soddy 
lives plowed up by trouble, but their lives 
are improved, as is shown by the clarifying 
effects produced upon them, by being turn- 
ed up from the very bottom. — Morning 
Sermon, August 14, 1859. 



H 



OW doubly condemned will that man 



feel who finds that in denying Christ Sold 

J ° the world 

he has denied himself — that when he sold , inth ? 



himself for the world, he sold the world in 
the very bargain ! — Morning Sermon, June 
12, 1859. 

AS means to an end, all things are good. 
As ends only, they are good for 
nothing. And this is the reason why I 
read to you that singular chapter from 
Ecclesiastes, which made many of you stare 
so, where Solomon told what he did. He 
did a great many things that I hope will 
never be done again. He went through a 
wide circuit of folly which many Solomon- 
265 



bargain 



Solomonculi 



467 Pulpit Pungencies 470 

culi have undertaken to go through since. 
— Morning Sermon, March n, i860. 



A 



RICH man's sons are usually so 

Spigots 1 ^ many spigots in a hogshead. The 

bunghoie sum of a ll their bores is larger than the 

whole bung-hole ; and he cannot pour in as 

fast as they draw out. — Evening Sermon, 

February 5, i860. 



G 



OD is, by disappointments, continually 
we should V_>* heading us back on every side. If 

grow up long ° J 

s indHn* ** were not f° r this we should grow up long 
and spindling. — Morning Sermo7i, January 
15, i860. 

f T is very hard to find men now ; you 

sticks can fi n d good sticks in the woods for 

p ^meV an masts, though that is difficult ; yet you can 

Splicing find ten sticks easier than you can find one 

men 

man. We must make men now as they 
make masts ; they saw down a dozen trees, 
splice them together, and bind them round 
with iron hoops, and thus make masts that 
are supposed to be stronger than if they 
266 



470 Pulpit Pungencies 472 

were one piece of timber. And so with 
men ; if you want a good man, you have to 
take a dozen men, splice them together, 
wind the hoops of responsibility round and 
round them, put watching bands all about 
them, before you can get a man with whom 
you dare leave your money ; and then they 
will run away with it. — Evening Sermon, 
May 8, 1859. 



I DO not deny the right of a man to be 
converted in just the way that is best s t 
adapted to his nature. Every man has that 
right. God has a right to make seed 
sprout as he pleases. — Morning Sermon, 
May 29, 1859. 



IX the proportion that you become like 
God in your temper, that temper be- God , s 
comes a lens through which you see God ; Spy ~s lass 
for " the pure in heart shall see God.'' A 
pure heart is God's spy-glass. — Morning 
Sermon, October 16, 1859. 
267 



473 Pulpit Pungencies 475 

I OFTEN see men who seem to think 
that it is a very great thing to squeak 

great thing 

™ at every joint, and that every revolution of 

atever >- joint business should be accompanied with 

groans. — Morning Sermon, August 14, 

1859- 



M 



Squeal 



EN that have wealth and do not 
know what to do with it, are the 

We hear the 

victims most miserable men out of hell — and they 
ought to be ! There is a fable told of a 
man whose gold was poured molten down 
his throat. The same thing is done every 
day in the year among us ; and we hear the 
victims squeal perpetually in their wretch- 
edness and misery. — Morning Sermon, 
March 11, i860. 



1 



WOULD much rather fight pride than 
vanity ; because pride has a stand-up 

Stand-up 

,™y. wav of fighting:. You know where it is. — 

of fighting J 00 

Morning Sermon, February 5, i860. 
268 



476 Pulpit Pungencies 478 



1 



T stands to reason that a man whose 
life is regulated by a high moral pur- 



pose, can make a better use of his time stands to 

A reason 

than a man whose life is divided up by self- 
ish instincts.— Evening Sermon, February 
10, i860. 

I TELL you that the moral reasonings 
of the store and the counting-room, 
with reference to what is right and what is 

Staving off 

wrong in getting money, and the reason- judgment 

000 •/ now and 

ings of God's judgment-seat, will be very then! 
different operations. You can muzzle your 
fear, and you can silence your conscience, 
and you can go on making money by ways 
which God abhors, and which every honest 
man ought to abhor, and you can, in the 
meantime, have comparative peace ; but 
there is a great difference between staving 
off judgment now, and staving off revelation 
and judgment then ! — Evening Sermon, 
y annary 15, i860. 

I LIKE the tyrant's flail. I like to see 
him plow. I like to see him make 
himself asinine for breaking up the ground. 
269 



478 Pulpit Pungencies 480 

I like to see him do a yeoman's duty in the 
field. He is sowing the seed for the har- 
steering vest of liberty. For God, and not man, 
reigns in the earth. Men think they are 
direfting their own course, but God is 
steering them into his own harbors.— Morn- 
ing Sermon, December 4, 1859. 



them ! 



M 



ANY persons say that God made 
natural laws to do everything in 
And then the world, and then stepped out and left 

Stepped 

out them to themselves. — Evening Sermon, 



September 18, 1859. 



Y 



Stem 



OU have seen, in fields of grain, w r here 

there was an average low growth, 

Sa^Jng that here and there some long stalks shot 

up and bore a lordly head of wheat nearly 

twice as high as those round about them. 

So there are, in communities and churches, 

single Christians that throw themselves up 

with a long stem, and bend down with a 

full head — for the fuller the head, the more 

humble the man is apt to be. — Evening 

Sermon, October 9, 1859. 

270 



481 Pulpit Pungencies 481 



M 



OST men grow as vines do out 
West. When vines grow in God's 



vineyard, the tops are cut off, and they are with long 

polished 

kept down, so that the fruit grows near stems 
the ground, w T here everybody can reach it : 
but if you go out into the rich valleys of 
the West, you will find that at first the 
vines have fruit near the ground, but that 
they go on climbing, till by and by they 
get up to the tops of the highest trees ; and 
now you may climb ten feet, and not find a 
cluster ; you may climb ten feet more, and 
still not find a cluster ; you may climb 
thirty, forty, sixty, eighty feet, and there, in 
the topmost boughs, you will find grapes. 
There are hundreds of men who are grow- 
ing, growing, with long polished stems, 
reaching up eighty feet in the air, who lift 
their heads far up in the sunlight of their 
own prosperity, and who will have nothing 
to do with those who live down near the 
ground. Now do not grow like wild vines ; 
grow like cultivated vines, so that your 
fellow-men can at least touch the clusters 



271 



481 Pulpit Pungencies 483 

which are being ripened by your sap and 
blood. — Morning Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



IF you want to make a man exquisitely 
vain and selfish, let him make a pot- 
himseif tage of himself, and stew himself, and stir 
himself up in a journal. The man who 
writes a journal always has one eye on the 
printing-press. — Evening Sermon, November 
6, 1859. 



CHURCHES are but instruments of 
God. They are swords in his hand 
Churches for the accomplishment of his great pur- 
poses ; and if, when he goes forth to wield 
them, they stick in the sheath, so that he 
cannot get them out, how much value do 
you suppose he places upon them ? Nine 
out of ten of the churches in the world are 
not only swords that stick in the sheath, 
but they are so rusted that if you could get 
them out they would be good for nothing. 
— Morning Sermon, May 22, 1859. 
272 



the Sheath 



484 Pulpit Pungencies 486 

I AM in a strait, often, betwixt two. I 
do believe in conversion, and in the 
power of new spiritual life ; but after all, my x I:kks SS 
own observation has gone to show that a 
naturally mean man is very apt to have his 
meanness stick to him after he becomes a 
professor of religion. — Evening Sermon, 
February 10, i860. 



T 



HERE are a great many temptations 
that are mere nervous temptations, 



The Devil 

and a great many visions that are simply a disordered 

& J r " Stomach 

improper manifestations of the mental 
economy. There are a great many things 
which men register in their journals as the 
work of the Devil, that are nothing but the 
work of a disordered stomach. — Evening 
Sermon, May 22, 1859. 

I TELL you, that although there is 
great blessing in a prayer-meeting, no No 
prayer-meeting on earth is such a means P m >^ neet - 
of grace as a man's own store. — Morning man'sown 
Sermon, September 18, 1859. 

273 



487 Pulpit Pungencies 487 

f^HRIST comes, and walks, and teaches 
^-^ as never man taught. He fills the 

Not a good 

string whole world, lor the space 01 centuries, 
with the sublimity of his presence, and the 
majesty of his love. And now, in the 
. midst of these mighty sublimities a man 
comes and asks, " Do you think the mother 
of Christ was a virgin?" Why, a child 
ought to have thought better. Where is 
the moral sense ; what has become of the 
spiritual nature of a man that is untouched 
when God's hand runs across the chords 
of deepest feeling ! When the bright 
heaven above ; when the transporting glory 
of the beatified state ; when all the glories 
which poets have dreamed of — when these 
things are brought before the soul of a 
man, and God says, " This is yours ; the 
promise is to you and your children, and to 
them that are afar off," the man does not 
feel the promise ; he does not feel the glory 
of this moral disclosure ; he only feels that 
there is a blunder in the arithmetic some- 
where ; he only feels that the string with 



274 



487 Pulpit Pungencies 490 

which the medicine is tied up is not a good 
string! — Evening Sermon, October 2 , 1859. 

NOW Paul says, " I can do just which 
you please ; I can work, and work 
to the full ; or I can stand still, and not do 
a stroke." — Morning Sermon, November 20, 

1S59. 



1 



THINK the ten plagues of Egypt one 
after another, frogs, lice and all, would 



Not do a 
Stroke 



not be worse than is that plague, that in- lkF* 

and all 

tolerable nuisance of French literature. I 

Eugene 

had rather my child (and I speak the words Sue 
of truth and soberness) would take his 
chance in making a journey through pest 
hospitals, plague hospitals, yellow fever 
hospitals, five or six of them in succession, 
than to walk through those pest volumes 
of even one writer — Eugene Sue. — Evening 
Sermon, May 15, 1859. 

WHEN a child has come to be fifteen 
years of age, he is about old 
enough to take care of himself ; but when 
275 



490 Pulpit Pungencies 492 

a child is but fifteen days old, he needs 

mother, and father, and nurse, and minis- 

Surdngies tering care on every side. And our infant 

for the 

heart thoughts and yearnings are the ones that 
need nursing. The adult ones may safely 
be left alone. And yet we put overcoats, 
and girts, and surcingles, and harnesses on 
our heart - feelings after they get to be 
strong and robust. — Morning Sermon, De- 
cember 11, 1859. 

HOW many men can you find, who 
make it a part of their daily busi- 
feeimgs negs tQ SU pp ress a n ma lign feelings, and to 

manifest generous ones ? How many can 
you find who say to themselves, " When I 
go forth among my fellow-men, it is my 
duty to go with sweet-juiced feelings, and 
to make them dominant over my lower feel- 
ings ? " — Morning Sermon, July 24, 1859. 



HERE is a man who can lift fifty-six 
pounds, and throw it two hundred 

of creation 

feet. " What a great man ! says Tom 

Hyer ; " splendid fellow ! " And so he 

276 



492 Pulpit Pungencies 493 

would say of a man who could strike an- 
other hard enough to knock him ten feet 
through the air. Another man being ask- whipped 

Syllabub 

ed, " Is that your idea of manhood ? ' says, of creation 
" No ; I want a man who has taste, who 
sees everything on the side of beauty, 
who can sketch, group, arrange artisti- 
cally ; who has refinement of taste in 
things physical, and in things social ; and, 
in short, whose law and conscience in life 
is refinement — an aesthetic conscience, 
rather than an ethical. ,, This would fill 
the idea of manhood with some. Another 
man says, " Although your man is .better 
than a pugilist, he is far yet from being my 
man ; for a man of mere taste is but a 
whipped syllabub of creation." — Morning 
Sermon, February 27, 1859. 



N 



OT a great while ago, in Cortland- 
ville, a man went to hear Mr. 



Phillips and Mr. Curtis. I have since Synagogue 

, . . . . business 

made inquiries concerning the man, and over again 
learned that he stood second to no man in 
that place in respeft to piety, and man- 
277 



493 Pulpit Pungencies 495 

hood, and upright conduct. His church — 

whose particular name I will not mention 

The old — sat j n judgment upon him, and excom- 

bynagogue jo i 

overagahi municated him, for exercising his right to 
hear other teachers besides those whom 
they recognized. The case was appealed, 
and the court above confirmed the decision 
of the lower court. The case was again 
appealed, and the decision was again con- 
firmed ; and the man stands — happily for 
him — excommunicated. — Evening Sermon, 
December II, 1859. 



T 



S HERE are different sizes of feathers 
on an eagle ; there are wing-feathers, 
Tail-feather and tail-feathers, and down. And there 

lies 

are wing-feather lies, and tail-feather lies, 
and downy lies. You can lie without open- 
ing your mouth, as well as by opening it. 
Your little finger can lie as well as your 
tongue. — Morning Sermon, June 26, 1859. 

IF a man has nothing better to do than 
turning a grindstone, it is better to be 
educated ; or sticking pins on a paper, or 
278 



495 Pulpit Pungencies 497 

sweeping the streets ; it makes no difference 
what you do, you will do it better if you are 
an intelligent man. It is said that blood Ten 
will tell in stock ; and I know that intelli- 
gence will tell in man. — Evening Sermon, 
May 8, 1859. 

WHEN our Saviour preached, he 
never took a text out of the Bible, 
except in one instance — namely, when he " eve J t0 ° 
preached his opening sermon in the syna- out of the 
gogue. On all other occasions he took his 
texts out of life. And what a commentary 
is this fact upon those who say that we 
must not bring anything into the pulpit out 
of ordinary daily life, or anything which is 
not taken out of the Bible — a notion which 
is anti-Christian, and against the example 
of Christ, as well as against common sense ! 
— Evening Sermon, yanuary 15, i860. 



Bible 



1 



LOVE to see a strong man, and hear 



his voice in prayer. I like to hear a Thin, 

lath men 

healthy man sing songs — a man who is a 

strong worker, a strong thinker, a man 

279 



497 Pulpit Pungencies 498 

inside and out. I love to see the union of 
the spiritual and the physical. But these 
lath men thin, lath men — these long-drawn-out men, 
who have no industry, no work, no life at 
home — I never love to hear them sing, nor 
pray, nor think, nor talk. These spiritual 
do-nothings, these spiritual busybodies, 
these religious flies, going about into every 
house, in at every window — buzz, buzz, 
buzz — in at every chamber and every apart- 
ment — these miserable insects of devotion 
are good for nothing. — Morning Sermon, 
July 17, 1859. 

IF a pirate, or worse, the master of a 
slave-ship, has made a good thing of 
Thing l ' & & 

his unlawful traffic, I do not see why he 
should reludlate about going into a lawful 
traffic on the ocean, because he does not 
know what the ocean will do to him. I 
have seen men work ten times as hard to 
be villains, as they would have been obliged 
to work to be honest men. The greatest 
slaves I know anything about, are those 
whom the devil has got the upper hand of, 
280 



498 Pulpit Pungencies 500 

and whom he is compelling to dodge 
between the supreme law of God and their 
worldly prosperity. — Morning Sermon, De- 
cember 18, 1859. 



T 



HE conscience of commerce is both 

wise and true to itself; but the con- x2mg r 



science of Christianity is rather a queer 
thing, as the world goes. — Morning Sermon, 
July 16, 1859. 



GENIUS is immortal. Like stars, it is 
not darkened by use, nor extinguish- 
ed by time. The stars which shone over tiSi| 
Eden hang over our dwellings yet ; and the 
works of genius, as far back as there is any 
record of them, are just as fresh and just as 
bright at this time as they were at the 
beginning. But wealth, though it is in- 
tenser at the time, is only short-lived. It 
is hard to get, harder to keep, and hardest 
to transmit. And although it has a power 
to develop and to stimulate, it is not a safe 
thing for a man to rely upon, or to pride 
281 



500 Pulpit Pungencies 502 

himself in. — Morning Sermon, July 10, 

1859. 



1 



have seen persons that I thought were 
The ■*- benefited by going into the Catholic 
Thmg chuj-ch - no (- because they accepted the 
creed of that Church, but because they 
required to be led by so many visible things. 
They needed the support of authority, and 
they got authority enough there. They 
leaned upon it, It was the medicine they 
needed, and it seemed to do them good. 
They seemed to be made better by it. And 
that which makes a man good is the thing 
for him. — Evening Sermon, November 6, 
1859. 

WHEN you do a scrupulously honor- 
able thing, where you could do the 
The other other thin^ without blame of men, and do 

Thing & ' 

it in such a way that men know that you 
are acting from principle, you preach in a 
language that money-brokers can under- 
stand better than any other in the world. 
I might preach the doctrine of Christ to 
282 



502 Pulpit Pungencies 504 

them week in and week out, and not come 
so near to their conscience as you could by 
one honest aft done from the force of 
Christian principle, where you might have 
done the other thing with impunity. So 
you had better stay and preach the Gospel 
where your business is. — Evening Sermon, 
January 15, i860. 



A 



MAN'S clothes are a part of his 
earthly life. He is never at liberty 



to lay them aside. He may change their The 

n r r • 1 r 1 i substantial 

day-lorm lor a night-iorm ; he may change Thing 
their kind for winter or for summer use ; he 
may change their fashion, their form, and 
their decorations ; but the substantial thing 
clings to him as a part of his inevitable life 
— that he must be clothed. — Morning Ser- 
mon, February 5, i860. 



THERE are a great many hymns that 
tell us to praise God, and that tell us T ,hc very 

1 rhing 

about praising him ; but how few hymns of 

uninspired writers contain the very thing 

283 



itself 



504 Pulpit Pungencies 506 

itself, and burst forth in high jubilation. — 
Morning Sermon, November 6, 1859. 



G 



OD, who loves us so well, will no more 
permit us to mark out the things 
Suchlike which we are to have, than a parent will 

Things 

say to a child, " What do you want ? " and 
then promise to give it what it asks for. 
It would want the razors, the tempting 
bottles of medicine, the wine and brandy, 
( till it had tasted them ! ) and such like 
things. — Evening Sermon, February 10, 
i860. 



N 



OW the power of this world to teach 
us of God, and to bring us into 

Thinking . ...... . . - 

out of our communion with him, is not to be rendered 

windows 

available to us by an occasional meditation 
upon it, nor by reading a chaper of Her- 
vcys Meditations, or anybody else's medita- 
tions ; nor by thinking, now and then, out 
of our windows, on Sundays, at the world. 
— Morning Sermon, yuly 3, 1859. 
284 



507 Pulpit Pungencies 509 



o 



RDINARILY speaking, men who 
drink begin simply to add a little 



fuel to their energies, to raise a little steam hours 

out of the 

for the purposes of business. They can 2 4 
only work twenty-four hours out of twenty- 
four, and they want to work thirty-six ! — 
Evening Sermon, March 4, i860. 

'TPHERE are personal friends who will 
-L see in you, day by day, things that 
will make them doubt whether you are an behind 

your back, 

honest man, but who wont speak to you ' Though 
about them. They will talk about them 
behind your back, though. They will say, 
one to another, after having noticed some 
inconsistency in your character, " What do 
you suppose happened?'' and they will 
laugh among themselves at your expense. 
They will say, " He is a Christian — a mem- 
ber of the church, you know." — Morning 
Sermon, March 27, 1859. 

I SUPPOSE there never was a man 
equal to Paul — not even Moses. 
When I discourse about Moses I am sure 
285 



509 



Pulpit Pungencies 510 



Throwing 
in even 

the 
prophets 



that he is the greatest man that ever lived ; 
and when I discourse about Paul, I know 
that he is the greatest man that ever lived. 
Let these two men stand side by side. 
They are fit brothers, the one as a repre- 
sentative of the old dispensation, the 
other as a representative of the new dispen- 
sation ; the one a leader in the reign of 
muscle ; the other a leader in the reign of 
the spirit. These two men stand head and 
shoulders above any other men that ever 
lived since the time of Christ. Indeed, 
they are more than all the other men that 
have lived since that time, throwing in 
even the prophets. — Morning Sermon, May 
22, 1859. 



By 
feeling 

a 
Thump 



THERE are a million natural laws of 
which we know nothing. We are 
gradually learning them, as we find out 
where beams are in the dark — by feeling a 
thump, by discovering that there is some- 
thing in the way. — Morning Sermon, Jan- 
uary 15, i860. 

286 



5ii Pupit Pungencies 5 1 2 



o 



NE of the most pitiable things, I 
think, is to see Christians of differ- 



ent churches sharp as a sword, and running Thwacks 
at each other — to see, for instance, the Bap- 
tists coming down upon the Presbyterians, 
and the Presbyterians giving back equal 
thwacks upon the Baptists, and both of 
these denominations bombarding the Epis- 
copalians. — Morning Sermon, May 29, 

1859. 

* 

"^VON'T come to me with the question 
*S of moral agency. Is not a man able Present 
to perform all that God commands ? Yes, Ticket 
he is, as regards the abstract question. 
You take a man driving up Broadway with 
a nimble team when the street is choked 
and packed with omnibuses and wagons, 
and ask him, "Are you able to see that 
omnibus and that wagon, etc. ? Have you 
confidence enough to steer your buggy 
through them all ? " Yes, he says, in this 
particular instance ; but there are fifty men, 
and behind them are still more which I can- 
not see, and so a man must go through all 
287 



512 Pulpit Pungencies 513 

these without grazing or striking anywhere, 

or what is more, being struck anywhere. 

his That is but one, but these are all combined. 

Ticket 

Take man, full of selfishness and pride as he 
is, with the pressure of care upon him, and 
is it so easy to carry himself in the perfect 
justice and equity and love that is required 
in the Christian life ? Whether I can or 
can not, I don't, and you don't and won't. 
There is no man on the face of the earth 
who can go safely through the battle of 
life, fight his way to Heaven's gate, and 
present his ticket and say, " I have won 
the fight, and now I want my reward." — 
Evening Sermon, May 21, 1859. 

THERE is an impression among men 
that Christ has made an atonement, 

The right ..... . ,, 

Ticket and he is 111 heaven ready to receive all 
who obey him. Their view of it is, that a 
certain way has been opened up by the 
atonement of Christ, and if they can only 
find it, they can go straight to the gates of 
heaven and present their ticket, and Christ 
says, " Here is a man got here the right 
288 



513 Pulpit Pungencies 515 

way, brought the right ticket, countersigned 
Faith, and all that, and he must be admit- 
ted." — Evening Sermon, May 29, 1859. 

ALWAYS reason up, never down. 
Under any circumstances, never 
allow yourselves to say, " But may I not do Tied 
this?" Never say to yourself: " Has not 
this been tied too tight ? " I say a man 
who is just as good as the law makes him, 
is a mean man. — Evening Sermon, June 
12, 1859. 

THERE never was a fence that would 
keep moles and vermin out of a 
man's farm ; and there never was a fence 
that would keep hawks off from it. Birds 
will fly over any fence he can build. The 
best thing a farmer can do is to take care 
of his soil, so as to have a harvest so 
rich that he will be able to spare a little to 
vermin and birds. No man ever had a con- 
fession of faith or system of doctrine that 
would keep out the moles or the birds of 
the air. The only safe way is to have such 
•289 



Practical 
Tilth 



the church 



515 Pulpit Pungencies 517 

practical tilth in the church, that it does 
not make much difference if it is stolen 
from. — Evening Sermon, October 16, 1859. 



1 



THINK we must judge of human cha- 
racter as men do of timber. I do not 

charader care what a man's character may be, the 

and . . 

Timber effect upon it of his telling a lie is what a 

worm channel is in a sill of oak. When a 
stick of timber has one worm channel run- 
ning through it, it may be a strong stick of 
timber yet, but it is weakened some. When 
it comes to have two or three of these 
channels running through it, it is good for 
nothing. — Morning Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



w 



ITH many men the question is not 
whether they can be overcome, 
Timber but at w ^at pressure they can be overcome. 
be broken All pieces of timber may be broken. Some 
will bear a ton, some ten tons, some a hun- 
dred tons, and some a thousand tons, but 
there is a point at which the strongest 
piece of timber will break. And we must 
not be in a hurry, when a man falls, to say, 
290 



517 Pulpit Pungencies 519 

" That man was a corrupt old hypocrite." — 
Evening Sermon , December 4, 1859. 



PAUL says : " For even when we were 
with you, this we commanded you, 
that if any would not work, neither should 
he eat." What a time there would be in 
New York if this should be enforced now ! 
— Evening Sermon, yuly 17, 1859. 



What 

a 
Time I 



\ 



70U would think to look at that bell 
up in the belfry, " Oh, such a bell, 



For all the 

lifted up so high, it only needs that some world like 
one should pull the rope to make it sound Tin ^ an ! 
gloriously through the air ! " Well, pull the 
rope ; it sounds for all the world like a tin 
pan ! It is cracked. I see men in the old 
belfry of prosperity ; and other men are 
looking up at them and saying, " Oh, how 
happy they must be ! " Well, ring them, 
"and see how they sound. — Evening Sermon, 
February 10, i860. 

291 



Torpid as 

a 

Toad 



520 Pulpit Pungencies 521 

\\ 7 HERE you hear a young man who 
* * is torpid as a toad in his higher 
nature, saying, "It makes no difference 
what you are morally," it is easy to predi6l 
what kind of a man he will make. — Morn- 
ing Sermon, May 8, 1859. 



WHEN men are looking upon the field 
of life, they say oftentimes, " Here 
Toad-stool are persons that have retired from the tur- 

just * 

as good! mo y_ f jjf e • they can S erve God. Here is 
this sister of mine, that walks aside from 
life, and knows nothing of its storms, and 
on whom God's mercies descend like dews, 
unasked : she can be a saint. She can 
serve God a great deal better than I, that 
am sent down into the midst of the torna- 
does of tropical temptation ? " Suppose 
that a recluse had been discovered living 
alone on the side of the Alleghany moun- 
tains, yi the times of the Revolution, and 
one of the soldiers, speaking to General 
Washington of him, had said, " That man 
— oh, what a patriot he can be in his cabin, 
meditating upon his country's glory ! If 
292 



521 Pulpit Pungencies 522 

he was down ifl the camp, amid the roar 
of battle, or on the tedious march, he could 
not be a patriot ! " What do you think 
about that ? Would you not say of a 
patriot on the side of a mountain, that a 
toad -stool or a mushroom was just as 
good? — Evening Sermon^ January 15, i860. 



C^ EOLOGISTS sometimes find toads 
^ sealed up in rocks. They crept in 
during the formation periods, and deposits Geological 
closed the orifice through which they en- and 
tered. There they remain, in long dark- 
ness and toad stupidity, till some chance 
blast or stroke sets them free. And there 
are many rich men sealed up in mountains 
of gold in the same way. If, in the midst 
of some convulsion in the community, one 
of these mountains is overturned, some- 
thing crawls out into life which is called 
a man ! — Evening Samoa, January 15, 
i860. 



293 



Too bad 



523 Pulpit Pungencies 524 

MY father used to make me believe 
that the end of the rod that he 
held in his hand was a great deal more 
painful to him than the end which I felt 
was to me. It was a strange mystery to 
me, but I did believe it ; and it seemed a 
great deal worse to me to be whipped on 
that account. I used to think that if he 
would not talk to me, but would whip me, 
I could stand it a great deal better. So I 
could have stood it better, and not been 
benefited. For a child is not whipped till 
the sensation goes to the heart, and touches 
the feeling. But when my father made me 
cry by talking to me, and then whipped 
me, and then made me cry by talking to 
me again, I thought it was too bad. — 
Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 



M 



OST persons suppose that their 
pains are keener and more unen- 
A Tooth 3 durable than other people's. They think 

can ache 

like theirs that nobody's tooth can ache as their tooth 
aches ; that nobody can be afflicted with 
such rheumatism as they are afflicted with ; 
294 



524 Pidpit Pungencies 525 

that there never was another case of gout 
like theirs ; and that no fever was ever 
known which would compare with that Tooth s 
which they have. They are actually proud Hke theirs 
of their maladies. There are persons who 
think no one else ever was so extremely 
sensitive as they are, and that no one else 
ever suffered as they suffer. You greatly 
offend them if you tell them that you sup- 
pose other people have probably suffered as 
much as they do. — Morning Sermon, July 
24, 1859. 



NOW this whole spirit which tends to 
make men look upon those about 
them, and say, "Stand lower, stand lower, Topofthe 
stand lower," is of the earth earthy. The • is in 
elder brother knows that his sister is lower 
than he in years ; and she knows that in 
this respedt the one next younger is lower 
than she. But everybody knows that the 
top of the family is in the cradle. — Morning 
Sermon, May 8, 1859. 
295 



the cradle 



526 Pulpit Pungencies 527 



1 



water 



NOTICE that the lowest natures need 
the most beauty in this world. What 
into would a miser marry a woman for ? You 

and never 

i .°. l _ 1 ? ed take one of those hard men — granite into 
which you have drilled, and never touched 
water ; whom you stumble over and break 
in pieces ; who falls upon you and bruises 
you. You go from him, and return in ten 
years, you find him just as hard. But you 
speak of his family, and he is ready to wor- 
ship you. What's the change ? He has 
been married five years. You instantly 
desire to see the woman who could awaken 
love in such a breast. — Morning Sermon, 
January 2, 1859. 



Y' 



"OU that are strong are to help that 

man who cannot control his temper ; 

ToutL his skin and your skin may be different ; 

made n tender it may be that you are made tough, while 

he is made very tender. If he does not 

know how to hold himself, ,do you help him 

to hold himself; if he cannot extinguish 

the conflagration that tends to break out, 

do you bring the engine of your sympathy 

296 



527 Pulpit Pungencies 530 

and help him to put out the fire. — Evening 
Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



HE was as tender as a woman — or 
rather, I should have said, he lack- 
ed the toughness of a woman ; for, slender Tou o f^ es 
and shrinking as women are, when troubles 
come they are almost the only persons who 
are tousrh of heart. Thev are tender of 
skin, but inside they are as strong as iron. 
— Morning Sermon, June 12, 1859. 



The 



I 



SUPPOSE there is a great deal in stock 



6 1 



I suppose that some men are born 



honest men. You would have to begin ori-kLi 

1 ow 

and untwist the skein to the original tow 
before you could weaken their honesty. — 
Evening Sermon, February 10, i860. 

A MAN from Rome desires to give me 
some conception of Raphael's last Ra haePa 
and greatest work, the Transfiguration. In VrTtion" 
order to give me as accurate an idea of it 
as possible, he says : (I give imagined num- 
bers) " It is twenty feet high, and fifteen 
297 



: Pu-pi: i' : z 



~—7~~ '. . _ 1_ 



J C 

: wide It is :i ted upon canvas. The 
canvas itself is made of linen. T 
irSii- hrst '.:.:.'. ::: ;. s:rt :: :iea:l rriur.i. This 

5 the foundation on which the p: 
was painted. In the centre is a mountain, 
which iiviies the picture hut: upper 
Irwer parrs. Eei:w the rurur.tiin is a 
ster.e represeutiuu Chris: icstiuc; :ut 
levils. Above i: is the Transfiguration, 
which, having given a general description 
;: the p:::ure ::: truer respetts. 1 wu. u :w 
proceed to describe to you in detail." So 
he takes out from his pack a bundle 
a number of little carefiilly-folded pape 
it He opens them sue : zssiv y. The first 

uains the blue pigment; the second, the 
chrome pigment ; the third, the ochre ; the 
fourth, the burnt umber. After he has 
exhibited them all, fa There are all 

the elements of the Is : raped 

them off" from it myself N 
philosophica of the Transfiguration 

: h.aphaeL Just bear in mind the dimen- 
sions of the that it is made on can- 
that there is a mountain in the centre, 
298 



530 Pulpit Pungencies 532 

and that there is one group above and an- 
other below ; and then conceive how these 
elements should be put together to make a 
most splendid picture, and you have as 
good an idea of it as though you were to go 
to Rome to see it." I have no doubt of it. 
— Morning Sermon, February 27, 1859. 



D 



O you suppose that religion is like a 
bird in a cage, and that you can lock 



Different 

it up in the church, and that the keeper will Translations 
take care of it, and feed it, and have it ready 
to sing for you whenever you choose to come 
here and listen to it ? Is that your idea 
of religion ? Very well, then ; your Bible 
and mine are different. We read different 
translations ! — Morning Sermon, February 
8, i860. 



SOMETIMES government is lax at first, 
but increases with the necessities of 
the growing familv. But oftener, I think, dousiy 

governed 

parents are in the beginning full of wise 

resolutions of government, and the first 

299 



53 2 Pulpit Pungencies 534 

boy or girl is tremendously governed. — 
Evening Sermon, February 26, i860. 

T^OR when God brings men into this 
•*- world in a crude state, as sand and 
hammer kelp are brought into the manufactory ; or 
when, like crude iron, they are subjected to 
the transforming influences of this trip- 
hammer life, by which they are thumped, 
and jammed, and cut, and haggled, and 
pricked, and bruised, he does it that moral 
results may be evolved on a large scale. — 
Morning Sermon, September 25, 1859. 



life 



H 



Trot down 



UMAN life is much like road life. 
You stand on a hill, and look down 
Y better d anc * across ^e valley, and another pro- 
digious hill lifts itself up on the other side. 
The day is hot, your horse is weary, and 
you are tired ; and it seems to you that you 
cannot climb that long hill. But you had 
better trot down the hill you are on, and 
not trouble yourself about the other one. 
You find the valley pleasant and inspiriting. 
When you get across it, you meet only a 
300 



534 Pulpit Pungencies 536 

slight ascent, and begin to wonder where 
the steep hill is which you saw. You drive 
along briskly, and when you reach the 
highest point, you find that there has not 
been an inch of the hill over which you 
have not trotted. — Morning Sermon, Decern- 
her 18, 1859. 



M 



AXY persons trust God just as many 



cities light their streets, which, Trust 
when the moon shines brightly, are very ^ gas 

i-i 11 • t- " Moonshine 

particular to lisrht all their ^as-li^hts ; but and 

1 ° & ° ' prosperity 

which, when the moon is gone, neglect to 
light them at all. I have seen men who, 
when in prosperity, were strong in their 
trust in God, but who, when surrounded by 
adverse circumstances, had no trust in God 
or anything else. — Morning Sermon, April 
10, 1859. 

IT will not be long after you return to 
your own households before some- 
thing will go wrong, and you will get hold Tr >'iton 
of the wrong handle. Then will be your 
time to say, " Let me try on the sermon." 
301 



536 Pulpit Pungencies 538 

Do try it on. Try it a month — that is not 
long to wear a garment — and see if it is not 
the truth that I have been telling you. — 
Morning Sermon, August 14, 1859. 



E 1 



men 



' VERY executive man should be like 
those little tug-boats which come 
Tug-boat down the North River with three .or four 
barges on each side, and with other barges 
attached to them, till for half a mile almost 
the river is covered with the barges which 
they are carrying. Now, when God has 
given great executive power to a person, he 
is to be a tow, and to take down the stream 
hundreds of those blunt-bowed, slow-sailing 
barges. — Evening Sermon, June 26, 1859. 



D' 



k O not look at the dark side of things, 
but at the bright side. Do not 
Tump scratch the face of your affairs and dis- 

you 

out mto the figure them, but smooth them off by re- 
street & ' J 

cognizing the good that is in them. Even 
a man in a dungeon finds it pleasant to 
make pictures and to write on the wall 
with a coal or a piece of chalk. Instead 
302 



538 Pulpit Pungencies 539 



of making your adverse circumstances 
more murky by brooding over them, and 
repining on account of them, light them 



Tump 

you 

oat into the 

up with a cheerful, radiant spirit. Be street 
content, and remember that God says, 
" I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee ; " so that you may boldly say, " The 
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear 
what man shall do unto me." Did he 
say that if you did not pay up your rent 
before Saturday night, he would tump you 
out into the street ? You need not fear, 
for God is owner of owners. — Morning 
Sermon, yicne 5, 1859. 



H 



AVE you ever heard a man bring a 
harp into tune ? He takes his 



fork, and gets the concert-pitch in one P vanit f y ld 
chord. Then he goes to work to bring all Tuned u P 
the other chords to the same pitch. And 
such a groaning and complaining as en- 
sues cannot be imagined by one who has 
never heard it. The process of chording 
a harp and a heart are very much alike. 
This groaning and complaining continues 
303 



539 Pulpit Pungencies 540 

till every chord is brought to the concert- 
pitch, and then the harp gives forth but 

Pride and • i i • • i -1,1 

vanity one single harmonious impulse, and the 
Tuned up soul of music is there. And so the chords 
of a man's soul need to be brought into 
unison with love, for from that must all 
powers take their pitch. Pride and vanity, 
and every other instinct of the soul, must 
be tuned up till their vibrations are con- 
sonant with those of love. — Morning Ser- 
mon y February 5, i860. 



N' 



OW I see men who began away back 
at ten and fifteen years of age, in- 
juring dulging all the passions and appetites of 
the physical, at the expense of their souls ; 
every nerve rebels ; the stomach quarrels 
with the w T hole system. At last a child 
dies ; and just as though the child did not 
inherit the vile leprosy of the father ! They 
lay plans with their rickety consciences, 
and they fall ; success flies from their stag- 
gering reach, and they turn to and go to 
cursing Providence. — Morning Sermon, 
January 9, 1859. 

304 



541 Pulpit Pungencies 542 

WE know what is the direction in 
which we are to grow, and what 
are the materials out of which our growth ° n ^f 
must come. " Thou shalt love the Lord road 
thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and 
soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as 
thyself." Here is God's highway. We 
have got on the turnpike road. — Morning 
Sermon, April 24, 1859. 

TI THEN a man says to me, " I was in 
* * the great revival of 1856, and oh 
for more than a week, I was like a man J ns \ as , 

1 the clock 

hung over perdition ; and one night I pray- st ™ ck 
ed, and prayed, and prayed, and was in 
such distress of mind that I could get no 
sleep ; and just as the clock struck twelve, 
there suddenly came a divine light to my 
soul, which deluged it with very joy, and I 
have been a Christian ever since," — when a 
man says this to me, and I find, on inquiry, 
that he is very selfish, and very passionate, 
and very niggardly, and very worldly, I do 
not believe that he is a Christian, just be- 
cause he can put his finger on twelve 
305 



542 Pulpit Pungencies 544 

o'clock at night, in the month of June in a 
certain year, and say, a That is the time 
when I was converted." — Morning Sermon, 
May 29, 1859. 



r I ^HE effe<5t of things in this world upon 
-*- us depends upon the way we look at 
$20,000 them. Here is a man who says, " Money, 
be thou my God." And his God grows 
with him every year, till it grows up to 
twenty thousand dollars. Then comes a 
God-destroyer in the shape of a financial 
revulsion, and knocks his God to pieces ; 
and in bitterness he exclaims, " They have 
taken away my God." — Morning Sermon, 
yune 12, 1859. 



B' 



1 UT I cannot give half the applications 
I had intended to give. I have 

T. ill ° 

Twilight enough noted down to keep me talking 
till twilight. — Morning Sermon, April 24, 
1859. 



306 



545 Pulpit Pungencies 547 



1 



SAY when a person becomes a Chris- 
tian, that he loses nothing that he 



A 



should not be afraid to keep. If ever you Twiiight- 

faced. 

are sroing to be a Christian, don't set out to bai-iike 

00 ' i Christian 

be a gloomy-eyed, twilight-faced, bat-like 
Christian. — Evening Sermon, Jane 1 2, 

1859. 

DO you not know that when Dudley 
Tyng died like Samson, he slew 
more than he had slain during all his life Tynt y 

and 

before ? Do you not know that Christ Christ 
achieved his greatest victory when he died 
upon the cross ? Do you not know that the 
way for men to build themselves up is to 
be ground to powder ? — Morning Scnnon, 
May 22, 1859. 



M 



EX cannot do anything in marble, 
or on canvas, and not have their 



of that sort 



' Umbrella' 

name pronounced for two hundred years by .. H 

shadow of what they have done, so that sonShing 

the world knows them by associating them 
with their works. But God, for six thou- 
sand years, has carved and painted as 
307 



547 Pulpit Pungencies 549 

no man ever carved and painted, and we 
continually behold his works, and who says, 
" God ? " Morning, and noon, and even- 
ing come and go, and how many of us say, 
" God ? " All the day long the sun pours 
down its life-giving rays, and who thinks 
of anything but " Umbrella," or " Harvest," 
or something of that sort ? — Morning Ser- 
mon, July 10, 1859. 



SOME of you need an immense amount 
of under-draining before you can 
plant anything and have it grow on the 
top. — Morning Sermon, July 3, 1859. 



MAN thinks he is going to find peace 
by introspection, but that will 



t? 



nfixed 



bring him no peace. He seems to have no 
right to go to Christ until he gets some- 
thing regulated here. Just as if a poor, 
sick wretch should say, " I will go to the 
doctors as soon as I get well ; it would be 
foolish to go before I get well ;" or as if a 
man. should say, " I am going to the horo- 
logist's as soon as my watch runs well." 
308 



549 Pulpit Pungencies 550 

The time you need to go to the doctor's is 
when you are sick, and you want to take 
your watch to the horologist's before it You have 

got to go 

runs well. Man says, " I must wait till I Unfixed 
comply with certain conditions and get fix- 
ed right before I go to Christ, and then he 
will look upon me, and I shall begin to feel 
peace." You have got to go to Christ un- 
fixed, unregulated, and wrong. — Evening 
Sermon, July 10, 1859. 



Always 



I DID not dare to say, in 1856, that I 
thought union prayer-meetings would 
tend to bring the different churches to- £^j) 
gether, for fear that if they got the idea w v 
that they were being assimilated, this most 
desirable result would be defeated. We 
have always wanted union, you know. I 
never saw the time when I would not have 
gone for a union of the churches, if all 
Christians would have become Congrega- 
tionalists. — Morning Sermon, May 29, 

1859. 

309 



Unions 



551 Ptilpit Pungencies 553 

WE live in an age in which there is a 
great noise of fear of the destruc- 
tion of governments and unions. This 
kind of music has sounded ever since the 
ark was built. — Thanksgiving Sermon, No- 
v ember 29, 1859. 



F 



OR myself, I know of but one refuge 
(though to the pure all things are 
Up and down pure), and that is the simple morality of the 
New Testament — that simple-hearted, ro- 
bust morality, with an up-and-down love of 
right, and an up-and-dowm hatred of wrong. 
— Evening Sermon, May 15, 1859. 



T 



story 



V HE man who trusts in God, lives in 
the upper story of his head ; while 
up^er the man who does not trust in God, lives 
in the lower story of his head. The man 
who trusts in God, lives in an observa- 
tory, where he enjoys the sunlight and the 
pure atmosphere of heaven ; while the man 
who does not trust in God, lives down in 
a dank and dungeon cellar. — Morning* 
Sermon, April 10, 1859. 
310 



554 Pulpit Pungencies 555 



1 



T is, likewise, to be remembered that 
no man has a right to prophesy good 



Better 



as a consequence of deception. It is not 

prophesy 

.generally believed that we have a right to Up-stream 
indulge in some degree of equivocation, 
to make use of partially deceiving state- 
ments, to tell ornamented lies, when we 
do these things that good may come. It 
is generally believed that it is benevolent 
and humane to use deception, where it is 
done with a belief that good will result 
therefrom. Now, I remark, no man is a 
prophet ; and if he wants to prophesy. 
he had better not prophesy up-stream 
— he had better not prophesy against 
God's nature. If you will prophesy, pro- 
phesy in the direction that God's nature 
runs. — Morning Sermon, jfune 26, 1859. 



1 



F any person outside of our party re- 



viles us Republicans, we say, " No Republicans 
matter what he says ; he belongs to the 
other party." If a man outside the church 
reviles Christianity, or those who profess 
to be Christians, it is common for those 
3" 



555 Pulpit Pungencies 557 

in the church to say, " Why, he's an in- 
fidel ; he's an unbeliever ; we must not 
mind what he says." — Morning Sermon, 
March 27, 1859. 

varnish r I ^HAT miserable varnish which men 
■*■ stick on the outside, and call it 

Society religion ; that miserable estimate which 
they make of religion, that chattering of 
prayers, that face-religion, that Sunday- 
keeping religion ; all that so-called religion 
which is but an external covering of pride 
and selfishness, of worldliness and vanity — 
the curse and wrath of God abideth upon 
it. Nowhere else are there such terrific 
anathemas against such religion as those 
which fell from the lips of Christ Jesus. It 
is enough to make a man tremble, to give a 
man the chills and fever, to walk through 
those chapters in the Bible where Christ 
preached to Tra6l Society men. — Evening 
Sermon , yime 12, 1859. 



G 



OD's union with men is not a shadow, 
is not a figure, is not a dream ; it is 
312 



557 Pulpit Pungencies 559 

the statement of a fact as literal as any law 
in nature. The union of sunlight with S ^f ht 
vegetables is not more real. — Morning Ser- ege a 
mofty March 4, i860. 

YOU shall find that they who are free 
from hardships, from troubles, from 
the necessity of endeavor, and who never Men 

good for 

struggled with adversity of any kind, can- Veneering 
not be relied upon for sills and posts. They 
may do for veneering the inside, where you 
want something pretty, but they are good 
for nothing else. — Morning Sermon, Sept- 
ember 25, 1859. 



LOVE sits as God's vicegerent in the 
soul, and I will not fight with my bre- 
thren. There is now and then a man who 
is not susceptible to love, or anything else 
that is good, and I deem it necessary to 
exterminate vermin wherever they may be 
found ; but I will love all my brethren if 
they will let me. — Morning Sermon, May 
29, 1859. 

313 



Vermin 
vs. 

brethren 



560 Pulpit Pungencies 561 



w 



HEN ministers, and elders, and 
members of the church, instead 

Passions r , - . 

and 01 loving each other, are seen wrangling, 

Vermin 

and quarrelling, and railing at one another ; 
when they exhibit natures as full of selfish 
passions as a sepulchre is of dust and ver- 
min, it is not to be wondered at that scep- 
ticism and infidelity are rife among us. — 
Morning Sermon, August 7, 1859. 

SEVENTEEN men terrified two thou- 
sand brave Virginians into two days' 
Virginian submission, — that cannot be got over ! The 

courage ' ° 

foxes^aiis common sense of common people will not 
fail to see through all attempts to hide a 
natural shame by a bungling make-believe 
that the danger was really greater than it 
was ! The danger was nothing — and the 
fear very great, and courage none at all. 
And nothing can now change the facts ! 
All the newspapers on earth will not make 
this case appear any better. Do what you 
please — muster a crowd of supposed con- 
federates, call the roll of conspirators, and 
include the noblest men of these States, and 
3H 



561 Pulpit Pungencies 561 

exhibit this imaginary army before the peo- 
ple, and, in the end, it will appear that 
seventeen white men over-awed a town of vir s iniaa 

courage 

two thousand brave Virginians, and held f 0X eVtaiis 
them captives until the sun had gone laugh- 
ing twice around the globe ! And the at- 
tempt to hide the fear of these surrounded 
men by awaking a larger fear, will never 
do. It is too literal a fulfilment, not 
exactly of Prophecy but of Fable ; not of 
Isaiah, but ^Esop. A fox having been 
caught in a trap, escaped with the loss of 
his tail. He immediately went to his bro- 
ther foxes to persuade them that they 
would all look better if they, too, would 
cut off their caudal appendages. They 
declined. And our two thousand friends 
who lost their courage in the presence of 
seventeen men, are now making an appeal 
to this nation to lose its courage too ; that 
the cowardice of the few may be hidden in 
the cowardice of the whole community ! 
It is impossible. We choose to wear our 
"courage for some time longer ! 



315 



562 Pulpit Pungencies 563 



D 



ID you ever see a power-loom ? If 
you never did, do not go to Lowell, 

Power-loom . - 

ought to or any other place where there is one in 
operation, without seeing it. I never saw 
one but what I thought it ought to vote. — 
Morning Sermon, April 24, 1859. 



Vote 



Y 



OU have probably noticed that when 
men walk across a stream on a 

When men 

a^tfmbe? timber, if they look at their feet to see 
where they step, their head begins to swim, 
and very soon they have to swim or drown ; 
whereas, if they fix their eye upon a single 
objeft on the opposite bank, and never look 
at their feet at all, they reach the other side 
in safety. Now, if a man stands looking at 
this world, he gets dizzy and intoxicated, 
and falls ; whereas, if he fixes his eye upon 
the bank of the eternal world, he walks 
straighter in this world, and is more sure 
of reaching the other side in safety. — Even- 
ing Sermon, February 10, i860. 



316 



564 Pulpit Pungencies 566 

THE road to heaven is just as short, 
and may be just as sure, from Wall 
street as from Trinity church, that stands \v a ii°street 
at the head of it, holding up the cross in heaven 
ever-living light. — Morning Sermon, March 
11, i860. 



WHEN I speak of being clothed with 
the righteousness of Christ, I War ^be 
banish all ideas of going to some wardrobe 
and taking out a literal garment and throw- 
ing it upon me, and especially do I run 
back to its dusty hole of mischief from 
which it has been dug out, that notion of 
the imputation of another's righteousness, 
as though you could put on another man's 
righteousness as if it was a physical thing. 
— Evening Sermon, July 10, 1859. 



of 

righteous- 
ness 



r ARY Magdalen came and told w ™ ant 



M 

iV1 the disciples that she had seen 
the Lord, and that he had spoken these 
things unto her." But I'll warrant you she 
317 



you 



566 Pulpit Pungencies 567 

did not tell them how she felt. There were 
no words by which she could have done 
that. — Wednesday Evening Lecture, Febru- 
ary 1, i860. 



w 



HEN I find persons with nothing to 
do in life, persons who are educat- 
beforl n the ec ^ °f § reat resources, of great imagination, 
Washed °f g reat affeftion, great thinking powers, 
ayear very a6live, but nothing to do ; too rich to 
be obliged to work, and placed in a high 
position in society — (there is nothing 
worse) — staying at home, reading a great 
deal, thinking a great deal, rolling and 
rolling over feelings a great deal — when 
such persons come to me, my first thought 
is, God help them ! If the Lord in his 
good providence would only send some 
dispensation to take away their property, 
so they would be forced to work, so they 
would have to go out to work as the ser- 
vant girls do, go out and wash for a liv- 
ing, most of them would be very happy 
saints before they had washed a year. — - 
Evening Sermon, May 29, 1859. 

318 



568 Pulpit Pttngencies 570 



1 



F a man is your enemy, and is in trou- 
ble, you are to help him. If he is a 



Trouble 

stranger, and his trouble is brought within washes 

° all skins 

your knowledge, help him. If he is a alike 
foreigner, and you are a native, and he is 
in trouble, help him. Even if he is a black 
man, and you are a white man, and he is in 
trouble — trouble washes all skins alike — 
help him ! — Morning Sermon, October 16, 
1859. 



1 



TELL you it takes very poor material 
to make a modern conscience. A 



Washington 

man goes to Washington, for instance, reS peaabie 

1 1 , -1 • t , • 1 meannesses 

simple, pure, honest and right-meaning : he 
dwells there a year or two, and comes back 
home a drinking, corrupted, bribed man, 
lost to all industry, to all self-respect — 
given over to himself to get a living by 
respeftable meannesses. — Evening Sermon, 
May 15, 1859. 



Y 



OU cannot imagine what a waste- 
basket the future is. How things 
will accumulate on your table and along 
319 



570 Pulpit Pungencies 572 

your way, if you have no heaven to throw 

them into ! but the moment a man has the 

ctemai vast sweep of the eternal world for his 

Waste- . 

basket depository, how will his troubles be alleviat- 
ed or destroyed by his looking at every 
part of his life as relative to that ! — Morn- 
ing Sermon, March II, i860. 



A 



GREAT many men are addifted to 
much lugubrious soliloquizing and 
to steer complaining about this unsatisfying world ; 
by but whether it is satisfying or not depends 
upon what men try to satisfy themselves 
with. If a man were to take a watch and 
try to use it as a compass, to steer a ship 
by, he would say : How unsatisfying this 
watch is ! — Morning Sermon, March 1 1, 
i860. 



Water- 



I 



T is a man dying with his harness on 

that angels love to take. I hope 

saSts those old water-logged saints that died 

soaking in damp stone cells were taken to 

heaven. They had hell enough on earth, 

and it would be a pity for them to have 

320 






57- Pulpit Pungencies 574 

a continuation of it in the other world ; but 
I think they were the poorest of all human 
commodities ever taken in ! — Morning Ser- 
ine ■: Mc : 11, i860. 

DO you ask, "Why is it that while 
some men seem to be caught up 
almost intc the regions of heavenly bliss, I v? uare 

Water- 
am unmoved ? " It is because you are 

water-logged, sir ! Drop by drop, your 
being has become saturated to such a de- 
gree with the waters of worldliness, that 
you are but just sustained, while they, 
buoyant, are carried on so easily ? — E 
22, :S6o. 



THESE smooth, waxy characters, that 
an to come up without any posi- 
tiveness of being, who seem to sail through 5 •■' 
life as feathers sail down through the air, ci- 
soft, smooth, and carefully, there is 
to get hold of in the: slip through 

our affections, and we don't grasp them 
with power. There must be some saliency, 
even if it be rugged and wrong. There is 
32T 



574 Ptclpit Pungencies 576 

an element in this love that rouses up the 
heart to those round about it ; so that I 
think we love our worst children some- 
times the most. — Evening Sermon, July 
10, 1859. 



H 



E was declared to be a gluttonous 
man and a drunkard. God in 
^ t Christ was slandered as a glutton and a 
mtohfe drunkard; and for no other reason than 
that he refused to be an ascetic, and w r ent 
into life, and participated in the innocent 
festivities of the social board. — Evening 
Sermon, November 2, 1859. 

THE ways of looking at nature are 
scientific — that is, we look at it 

Form, ' 

whatnot merely in the order of cause and effeft ; or 
they are commercial — that is, we look at it 
in its productive qualities, and its rela- 
tions to human wants, and with reference 
to what we can make out of it, and what it 
can avail us ; or, they are artistic — that is, 
we look at it in its relations to the sense of 
symmetry and beauty in us, in respeft to 
322 



576 Pulpit Pungencies 578 

form, and color, and what not. — Morning 
Sermon, July 10, 1859. 

F N old times, when men were persecuted 
J- for their religion, they had nothing to Prayand 
do but to read the Bible, and pray, and be be and ned ' 
burned, and what not. — Morning Sermon, 
September 18, 1859. 



What not 



T 



HE preaching of many men is like 
children creeping in the sand. Their 



What under 

sermons contain pretty things, perhaps, ^ e d s £ n 
sweet sentences, but they make no impres- SCout? 
sion upon the hearer. There are fifty-two 
Sabbaths in the year, and the order of the 
church has been that there shall be two 
sermons preached each Sabbath — one in 
the morning, and one in the afternoon — no 
matter whether a man wants to preach 
them or not. Many men preach twice each 
Sunday for this reason, and no other. If 
asked, " What do you preach for ? " they 
say, " Because I must." " Why must you ? " , 
u Because I am expected to." They do not 
preach because they have anything to say ; 
323 



57<3 Pulpit Pungencies 579 

not because there are prevailing errors to 

be overthrown ; not because there are bud- 

' the sun dings of desire to be expanded into blos- 

did he 

preach soms ; not because of any sympathy they 
feel for the erring and the lost ; not because 
they feel, " Woe is me if I preach not the 
Gospel ; " but they preach because it is 
Sunday, and they have got to. When Sun- 
day comes round, such a preacher says to 
himself, " What under the sun shall I preach 
about ? " and the people, after they have 
heard him, say, " What under the sun did 
he preach about ? " — Morning Sermon, 
January 30, 1859. 



A FATHER, when he whips his boy, 
does not like to whip him through 
his clothes, because the boy may cry, and 

God j j j 

does not make a great ado, and yet not be hurt at 

Whip men ° J 

thei^clat a ^- But ^ trie father whips him on his 
bare skin, he knows that he is punishing 
him. God does not whip men through 
their coat and vest. — Morning Sermon, i 
February 29, i860. 

324 



and vest 



580 Pulpit Pungencies 581 



H 



OW many times, as you go up and 
clown Broadway with me, can you 



Walk me 

stop me when you see a man 01 whom you and 

-t-1 • t -i • Whisk 

can say, " This man, I think, is without sin, me and 



set me 



measured by this law of benevolence ? " down 
You would walk me down to Union Square 
and Canal street, and I should not stop 
. there ; then down to Fulton street, and I 
should get no breathing spell ; thence 
down to Wall street, and you would fairly 
run by that time from there to the Battery, 
and then up on the other side, and you 
would whisk me through street after street 
and set me down at Union Square again 
without having given me one single second 
to stop and say, " There is a man without 
sin ! " — Evening Sermon, May 22, 1859. 



THE private rights of a public man 
should be guarded as sacredly as the 



Whether 



altar of a temple. If the President of the Pl .j'^ ent 
United States pursues an inhuman course whiskey 
towards the Indian ; if he transgress the 
canons of liberty which he is sworn to de- 
fend ; if he wink at evils which he is bound 
325 



581 Pulpit Pungencies 582 

to prevent or suppress, he deserves severe 
public rebuke. But in his own private 

Whether 

the home, whether he manages his individual 

President 

wjKS affairs with economy or stinginess, whether 
he drinks whiskey at his table, or nothing 
but cold water, whether he dresses well or 
ill, talks much or little, spends his income 
in one way or another — these and all such- 
like things do not belong to him as Pre- 
sident, but as a private man, and are 
sacred from remark. For good morals 
every man may be held responsible. There 
ought to be but one key to a man's privacy, 
and that is in his own hands ; but the devil 
has given everybody a key to it, and every- 
body goes in and out and filches whatever 
he pleases. — Morning Sermon, October 16, 
1859. 



BECAUSE a man happens to be black, 
I do not think he has more rights 
than a white man. — Morning Sermon, "July 
16, 1859. 

326 



Wince 



583 Pulp it Pungencies 5 84 

THERE are men that seem to thin 
- wc uk Ber willingly if ;'. 
were called to suffer as martyrs, illustrious- where it 

will make 

ly. Ah . that is just the thing, You would 
be willing to be placed where you would not 

: to surler, and where you would yet get 
the : ing. But it is pinching 

rring that God calls you to endure. He 

knov. : your weakness requires that 

you should suffer, and there he makes you 

Like a driver, he puts the stroke 

he lash in those very places where he 
knows it will make you wince. — Morning 

nan y February 19, i860. 



1 



have seen the heaviest establishments 
with the simplest sign over the door, 



:heir 

while a petty huckster filled his windows 

x J at the 

about every article in the shop ; and I v 
have seen persons s lently indignant . 

missteps in others, that I suspected that all 
the virtue they had was at the window ! — 
Evi vo. 

327 



585 Pulpit Pungencies 586 

IF the cause of God requires the exist- 
ence of an institution, and the institu- 
tion requires a little unfair dealing to navi- 

Wipe 

their crate it safely among the breakers, you will 

mouths, ° jo > j 

say long £ n( j fa^t men w [\\ undertake it, and will do 

prayers, 



etc. 



things which, if done in their every-day 
conduct, would stamp them with utter 
detestation among their fellow-men. Yet 
such men wipe their mouths, say long pray- 
ers, sleep with a good conscience, and get 
up in the expectation of being received into 
the kingdom of God the Father. I hope 
they will be, but they will get through as 
by fire. — Evening Sermon, May 15, 1859. 

THE things God does are so easy that 
he is willing to do them once a 
So easy, ^ a y ^ y ear rounc ^ winter or summer. 

to wipe All these frescoings of the sky in the 
morning and the evening, before which 
the greatest masters might sit down in 
despair, God seems to paint with his left 
hand, only that he may wipe them out and 
renew them day after day. — Evening Ser- 
moiiy December 25, 1859. 
328 



587 Pulpit Pungencies 588 

WHEX the child grows, it grows first 
on its animal nature ; next in its 
social and aiiectional nature ; next in its tittle witches 

11 n 1 1 • they act 

perceptive intellectual powers ; later in its 
reflective intellectual powers ; and latest and 
last in its moral nature. That part nearest 
the ground, which is the animal, grows 
first ; that part just above the ground, in 
which the affections reside, grows next ; 
that part which opens the understanding, 
grows next ; and that part which assimilates 
the child to spiritual beings, grows last. 
There is some comfort in this, when you 
see how like little witches your children 
act sometimes. You think they are cer- 
tainly bound for the jail or the gallows, un- 
til there comes to be an equilibration be- 
tween the moral feelings and the lower pro- 
pensities. — Morning Sermon, April 24, 
1859. 

NOBODY will tell you these things. 
Even your pastor won't. I would Even 

your 

rather any time c;o into the battle - field, v*** 

J & Won't 

unskilled as I am in soldiery ; I would rather 
329 



588 Pulpit Pungencies 590 

cut off a man's leg, little as I know about 
surgery, and then take care of him, than to 
tell a person his faults. I think to charge 
one of the batteries of Sevastopol was no 
more than it is to charge right up against a 
man's heart. — Morning Sermon, Marcli 27, 

1859. 



1 



REGARD all the agitations of our day 
as being so many plowings which are 
pfowings necessary as a preparation for the harvests 

of the 

worid-fkrm that are to wave on the world - farm — 
Thanksgiving Sermon, November 24, i860. 



D 



ID you ever persuade yourself, of a 
hot afternoon, to stop and witness 
„ T1 ? e , the contest of innumerable worms over a 

Vermicular 

h mce n carrion carcass ? Did you ever notice the 
greediness, and selfishness, and quarrel- 
someness displayed by the actors in a scene 
like that ? And yet such a contest is de- 
cent compared with the gigantic contest 
that has been carried on for thousands of 
years by the vermicular human race. — 
Morning Sermon, October 9, 1859. 
330 



N 



OW, when you wish to please God, 
treat him as one who feels sorry for 



i 



THINK, to put on the very climax and 
top of abomination before God, it 
seems as though there was a certain ele- 
33i 



591 Pulpit Pungencies 593 

THIS Christian love, then, is to be the 
disposition. It is not to be the 

r o • • i i Worn 

sweetmeat and coniection ; it is to be the as your 

eves 

bread. It is not to«be a disposition which, are 'worn 
once in a great while, going to the cabinet 
where it is kept, you shall take out of the 
casket, allowing it to shine and emit all its 
precious rays. It is to be a disposition 
that is to .be worn as your eyes are worn. 
— Morning Sermon, February 5, i860. 



better 



sinners ; treat him as one who longs to help The 
those that need help ; go to him confiding- the 66 
ly. No matter how bad you are — the worse 
the better. Old Martin Luther said, "I 
bless God for my sins." He would never 
have had such a sense of the pardoning 
mercy of God, if he had not himself been 
sinful. — Moniing Sermon, October 23, 1859. 



593 Pulpit Pungencies 595 

ment of piety needed to make it particular- 
ly devilish. Many men cover up these 
text things under smooth, round words ; they 

round 

a sin wrap a text around a sin, and so do utter 
abominations before God under the mild 
phase of sanftity. — Evening Sermon, May 
15, 1859. 



THERE is a car on that line, bearing 
the inscription — not so much to ad- 
written vertise the degradation of the blacks as the 

down 

an ass inhumanity of the whites — " Colored people 
may ride in this." I laugh when I see 
that. I think to myself, " The men who 
run these cars are after the pattern of one 
of Shakspeare's characters, who cried out, 
' Oh, that I were written down an ass ! ' 
They are written down an ass ! " — Morning 
Sermon, yuly 17, 1859. 



\1 7E are at zero when we are born, 

* * and we rise up in the tube of life 

little by little. — Evening Sermon y October 9, 

i8 59 . 

332 



Zero 



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THE GREAT TRIBULATION. TWO Series. I2H10. cloth, $1-50 

THE GREAT PREPARATION. do. . do. §1 .50 

THE GREAT CONSUMMATION. do. . do. $1-50 

Ernest Renan. 

the life of jesus. — From the French work, i2mo. cloth, $1.75 

RELIGIOUS HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 8\ r 0. cloth, $2.50 

Popular Italian Novels. 

doctor antonio. — A love story. By Rurnni. i2mo. cloth, $1.75 
vincenzo. — do. do. do. $1.75 

Beatrice cenci. — By Guerrazzi, with portrait. do. $1.75 

Cliarles Reade, 

the cloister and the hearth. — A magnificent new novel — 
the best this author ever wrote. . . 8vo. cloth, $2.00 

The Opera. 

tales from the operas. — A collection of clever stories, based 
upon the plots of all the famous operas. i2mo. cloth, §1.50 

Robert R. Roosevelt. 

the game-fish cf the north. — Illustrated. i2mo. cloth, $2.00 

superior fishing. — do. do. $2.00 

the game-birds of the north. — do. $2.00 

Toll 11 Phoenix. 

the squibob papers. — A new humorous volume, filled with 
comic illustrations by the author. i2mo. cloth, $1.50 

Matthew Hale Smith. 
mount calvary. — Meditations in sacred places. i2mo. $2.00 

P. T. Rarnum. 
the humbugs of the world. — Two series. i2mo. cloth, $1.75 



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